Missing Mail
By Mr.e

It's been three days now. Our mailbox is still empty.

I'm not talking e-mail either here. No, ... I'm talking the good old fashioned snail mail system. The mail has stopped coming. It's a curious thing actually.

We usually got a whack of mail every day. The first day our box remained empty, we didn't worry too much. But as it continued for three more days, we became a bit suspicious as to where our mail was going.

The day we voiced our shared concerns, a friend dropped by the house and when no one responded to the knocking the front door he made his way around the house to the side door. Much to his amusement and our stunned surprise he presented us with some mail. Like an icy chill the sudden realization of what our mail had been subjected to brushed my spine. It had been tossed onto the steps of our front deck.

Now we started to worry. Would this unseen mail carrier go on with his newfound delivery method, or had the paper indeed hired skilled and experienced newspaper carriers to deliver the mail.

I agree that the Canadian postal system is indubitably extremely qualified in the field of lost mail, but surely we would have been notified of the impending switch to a new and possibly alternative residential mail delivery systems.

Who knew?! Or did they hire specially trained birds?

The real problem with the 'thrown mail' was that this particular carrier was attempting to deliver our mail from the wrong location; we live on a corner and thus seem to confuse a lot of people even with clear instructions or directions on how to reach our home.

A simple check of the addresses on the envelopes being delivered, would or should have alerted this trained postal carrier that perhaps the street wasn't quite right...

It appears a new carrier has taken over this route and seems to be experiencing some extended difficulties in locating our address via the aid of an address. We even started to believe that we were suddenly thrust into a Bermuda Triangle of lost mail and befuddled carriers. If they can't find the address on the envelope, who the heck can?

To make things a bit easier on this new carrier, I affixed a clearly legible white sign to the gate, directly in the approach of his launching delivery, describing in detail and largish letters, where our address indicated we live and where this poor person would at long last discover that we indeed owned a mailbox. Things didn't get any better that day.

This promoted an emotion filled trip to the local mail sorting house to make use of the customer service person who had to bear the brunt of my outrage. Turns out that this 'new' carrier, unable to locate us via current address, would return the mail to the 'office' without somehow (say ... phone!!!) informing us why we weren't getting any mail. I got some mail that day but still prefer to have it left in our mailbox.

I almost understand when the pizza guy gets hopelessly and desperately lost trying to find a certain address within some very restricting time restraints, but when the mail man can't?... I don't want to think about that too much.

Whadaya' know? We got mail today.

Good thing there's e-mail.