After a Postal Holiday, I had a lot of packages to ship, packages I couldn't just put out for the delivery person to pick up, mail that needed a customs form or delivery confirmation and insurance, and Stan needed to send some registered mail. We don't have a post office in our neighborhood, not a *real* one, anyway. We used to, a few blocks away. It was convenient. I used to use it all the time. Then USPS went through some kind of corporate downsizing in the early Bush era, eliminating our convenient little postal station, and put it in the convenience store next door. I can't use it anymore...first of all, they don't ship anything out of the country...how absurd is that? Also, you have to request a receipt, and it's typically illegible. For my business I need a real bonafide USPS itemized receipt that one gets by default at any *real* post office. Using this contracted postal station is now out of the question. Plus everyone seems like they're on drugs there, drug dealers in the parking lot, drug users working in the convenience store. I stay away. Then there's the main station a couple miles away. I don't like that place for reasons I won't go into, but let's just say it's usually super crowded with long lines, the parking is bad and there's usually panhandlers in the parking lot. Recently, we discovered the next nearest post office, which is actually in Monona, is about 4 miles one way. It's now my default post office. It would be a lot closer if there was a ferry across Lake Monona, but there is none, so every time I go there, usually about every other day or so, we or I take a trip around the lake. It's not a bad drive, the road is a little rough and there's lots of traffic lights and school zones, but it's not bad. It's best if I can do it as early in the morning as possible, but usually that's not the most convenient. Today I felt like going to another post office, one in Cottage Grove, a suburb of Madison. Once you get on Cottage Grove Road, it's a straight shot going 55 most of the way, a very easy 7 miles, and much faster than going to the next closest post office in town, a whacky old stuck-in-the-60s one on the west side, which is met with horrible stop and go traffic all the way. Plus, I just felt like a ride in the country.

One nice thing about the Cottage Grove Post office is it is seldom ever busy. Easy errand, I thought. When I got to the window, I instantly recognized the postal clerk as one who gave Stan a hard time about shipping a large, heavy book via media mail but I had forgotten about that incident in the interim period. I was a bit worried she'd give me a hard time too, which she did, a bit.

"Do you work out here?" she asked me

I tried to interpret what that meant. Do I work out? No, I'm an art potato.

I asked her the question back: "Do I...work...out...here?" And then I answered myself, thinking she must mean if I work in Cottage Grove, "...No...." I wondered what she was getting at as the question seemed suspicious.

"(The Street I live on) in Madison seems like a long way to drive here," she said.

OK, what am I dealing with here, I thought. Here's someone who's clearly on the lookout for anything suspicious, because that's what her boss tells her to do, but clearly her terrorist meter is permanently set on broke and instead she's picking apart insignificant things like my home address and Stan's large book which was clearly too heavy to be a book so he really should've sent it parcel post because he was trying to get away with shipping it for the less expensive media mail...OK, I got an odd one. I'll just keep talking so she won't be able to get a word in to ask me questions, err, I mean interrogate me. So I go off on how I'm going out this direction anyway and I don't like going to the main post office and I used to have a post office in my neighborhood, blah blah blah, and I liked to take walks there..blah blah blah. Clearly, I was grasping at dead bits of conversation...anything to keep yammering so she couldn't speak, but I'm not big with the gift of gab, so by the time she got to the end of my packages and I wrote her a check, there was plenty of time for her to say,

"Can I see some ID, this is a low-numbered check." Yes, they can ask for my ID for any reason they choose when I present a check, but low-numbered? The check was in the 1500s. I'm sorry, but that's not a low-numbered check.

"Low-numbered? I've had that account for 17 years!" (Well, it was only 14 years, but I forgot I switched banks in the early 90s)

"You must use your debit card a lot," she said.

'The hell? I don't have a fucking debit card. It's just that I'm not constantly buying a lot of crap where I would be on check number 589,441 by now! "No, I just use credit cards or pay bills online," I said. Damn this woman was really annoying. Maybe she was just trying to make smalltalk. I hate smalltalk, especially when it's prying about my personal life. Small talk about the weather is fine, but let's not delve into me personal life, eh? But then the paranoid side of me thinks she's gathering this information because she thinks there's something suspicious about me coming a WHOLE 7 FRICKIN' MILES to a post office. Look, put a damn post office in my 'hood already, and I won't have to bother your nosey ass. The thing is, 7 miles is not a long way to drive to a post office *once in a while* especially when it takes almost as long to drive to one that's 4 miles away and when it's the second closest one you can really go to. I could drive to Kenosha to mail packages if I wanted to. It would be unusual, not to mention a waste of gas if I wasn't already going there, but there's no law that says you have to mail packages at the post office nearest your home. I've mailed packages 1000 miles away in Colorado with my backaddress of Madison, and I've been asked fewer questions than mailing it 7 miles away.

Anyway, just as I ran out of gas trying to ramble on so she couldn't get a word in, I've also run out of gas in the telling of this story and don't know how to conclude and wrap it up into a neat little package. So I'll leave this package unwrapped. That way, no one can accuse me of shipping something suspicious.

Labels: It Takes All Kinds