Another Sign of the Times?
Sat., June 13, 03:59 PM
Just when you think some things will never change, they do. I just can’t decide whether it’s a good thing or not.
Walking has been my favorite form of exercise for most of my life. Around the time I was looking for a new job (y’know, the one I never found), I decided I needed more exercise and I began looking for places to go. It didn’t have to be exciting; I just need a destination. A simple one was the mailbox. I was mailing out résumés anyway.
There was a mailbox a few blocks away; a round trip was about half a mile. A good walk, even if I got no other exercise that day. I did it fairly often, until I found some temp job or other and changed routines again. Even though I needed it less often, I was glad there was a mailbox nearby. Last summer, however, I went to the mailbox and… it wasn’t there. I got off the bike and checked the spot because I thought I was going nuts. You could still see four spots where the legs of the box had stood.
Okay, it wasn’t a tragedy. You can understand the Postal Service being unwilling to maintain a box that wasn’t used much. And there was another one a couple of blocks away. There really was. Except, when I got on the bike to mail a couple of letters today, there wasn’t. The closest mailbox to home is now about a mile away.
I know I am part of the equation. I communicate by e-mail, and I pay about half my bills on line. But there are some things that still have to go via snail mail. Letters to my friend Gloria, for example, who does not want any kind of computer. Checks to any vendor whose bookkeeping system cannot accept electronic payments. (Sometimes that just means the bookkeeper is too clueless to realize she received one!) I pay all medical bills with a paper check.
I want a paper trail for medical charges — with details. Even if I had not known it before, working as a legal secretary in personal injury cases taught me that every entity bills just a little differently from every other one. There may be three legitimate bills for the same procedure (for example, site, operator, and consulting analyst). Three more bills for the same procedure for a second opinion. And mistakes are often made.
So, depending on the circumstances of any given month, about half my bills go out in envelopes with stamps. I still love using stamps, although I generally buy them online. The people who deliver my mail and the ones who work at my local post office are polite and considerate. In recent months I have come to trust them even more than some of the private couriers. It isn’t the same all over, of course. Gloria lives in a “forgotten neighborhood,” where the letter carriers resent the fact that they have to go there at all.
The mailbox I used today is probably safe for a while. It sits across the street from a church and a parochial school, both of which probably send enough mail to make it worthwhile. The next closest place I know, however, is the central post office itself. I had better practice more on the bike. Gasoline is going up again — even higher than I thought it would.
