Mail Call

The other day, I got my panties in a wad when my teen called me old in the Chick Fil A drive through line. I had made a comment about how young people experience déjà vu more often than older people, and she made some snarky comment that boiled down to me being old. I can’t remember the actual comment but it certainly offended me at the time. Why can’t I remember what she said? Because I’m too old to have functioning short- term memory.

I never thought I would be one of those people who would spend a great deal of time remembering how things used to be, mainly because that’s something that old people do.  Only I find more and more that I do wax nostalgic for things that I took for granted in my youth. Like Saturday mail delivery.

The US Postal Service has announced it will discontinue Saturday mail delivery service in an effort to reduce costs and remain relevant. The change takes effect in August, so we still have plenty of time to get those last minute bills in the mail on a Saturday morning. No mail on Saturday makes me sad. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I loved getting mail when I was a kid, not that I ever did. I would obsessively look out the window, waiting for that familiar boxy white truck to work its way down the street, stopping in front of my house. If I was really lucky, I might have a card from an aunt or, gasp, even my father, or maybe the latest Ranger Rick magazine. I never minded licking stamps, and for a very short period, I even collected them, although I have no idea where I got enough of a variety to fill a cigar box. Have kids today ever licked a stamp? Come to think of it, do kids today even know what a cigar box is?

I still get a little excited when I see the mail truck coming down my street, even if I’m the one that pays the bills that are delivered now that I’m old. er. Older.   I have even, in the past week, stood at the end of my driveway so the mailman (can I still call him a mailman, or do I have to say postal worker?) can put the mail directly in my hand, as if I were awaiting the sea monkeys I ordered from the back of my comic book. I never outgrew my love of receiving mail, in the same way I still get a little excited over the ice cream truck, summers out of school, fat snowflakes falling from the sky, or when the cat settles down in my lap. Simple things are sometimes my favorite.

I’ll stop myself before I break out in song like Maria in “The Sound of Music,” but honestly, I fear that mail delivery is on the same road to obsolescence as CD players, tape players, record players, telegrams, chamber pots, and iron maidens.

Think for a minute.  No more mail. No more thank you cards. No more love letters. Instead, we can get electronic bills, ecards, and tweets of our loved one’s genitals. No wonder they don’t teach cursive anymore. I’m one day my future grandchildren won’t even learn how to write.

I have an eReader, but I rarely use it. I want to hold a book in my hand. I want to turn the pages. And if I liked it, I want to lend it to my sister or my friends:  Here, read this. It’s really good.

On Sundays, I occasionally persuade my younger daughter to sit with me and read the paper. She only picks up the crappy comics, but she reads Blondie and Garfield every time, and every time she wonders why she reads them because they aren’t funny. If we only read the newspaper online, we could scroll directly past Blondie and Garfield. And we could each be on a different iPad or tablet, and we couldn’t interact at all. If we had no newspaper, what would the cat sit on and attack?

I understand that the United States Postal Service is a dinosaur with a giant meteor aiming for it. But it’s more than just the snail mail. It is one of the last carriers of written human interaction. It starts with no Saturday delivery and forty five cent stamps, but where will it end?

I pay my bills online, I shop online, and I read online. But every so often, I stop what I am doing, put on a pair of shoes, and walk down the driveway to the mail box. I open the black door, and pull out a stack of papers, of possibilities. Most of it is junk, trash, wasted trees, but sometimes, it’s a little treasure, an invitation, a thank you letter from my nephew, a refund from the doctor’s office, a small package from my friend in Colorado. In that moment, I remember what it was like to be a child, to be the one to get the mail, which seemed like a privilege so many years ago.

Does that make me old? No, my age does that. It makes me pause. The world is changing so quickly, even before our eyes, and sometimes it takes an insult in the drive through line to remind us that teenagers are a real pain in the ass, and also how much of the world has evolved  in each of our lifetimes.  Some things I can’t wait for, like zero calorie chocolate and noninvasive knee replacement surgery. And others, like the possibility of no more mail, just make me wistful.

 Also, according to my teenager, only old people use words like wistful.