Mail...Why do I love thee?

It starts with the sound of the mailman’s truck.  I hear it the same way that kids hear the ice cream man’s jingle from 2 blocks away.  My mailman’s name is Dave.  I think it’s always wise to know your mail carrier’s name.  When it’s pouring out, I know that Dave will have my back.  Nary a drop of rain touches my Amazon packages.

I’m often home when the mail arrives.  Like a stalker, I wait until Dave has disappeared a respectable distance down the street before I slide outside and quietly lift the lid of my mailbox.  It’s a pretty mailbox too.  I looked high and low for something that would look good on the outside of my house and I knew I wasn’t going to find it at Home Depot.  I ended up on a website called www.budgetmailboxes.com and chose a classy little copper Craftsman style that has plenty of room for all of the magazines and catalogs we get. We get a lot.

My husband is a car guy and his drugs of choice are Automobile Magazine, Car & Driver, AutoWeek, RaceTech, F1 and Popular Science. I went on a subscription diet and cut myself back to Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Cooking Light (not that I cook or do it lightly) and More Magazine (because now that I’m over 40, I’m in the “club” and it’s actually a great magazine).  I also subscribe to The Week which is a less known news weekly but a great little magazine that summarizes what’s happened in the world that week in a completely objective way. They print articles and editorials from all sides of the argument (www.theweek.com).

And then, there are the catalogs.  Generations of trees have died to print the sea of catalogs that find their way to my mailbox.

It was a dark day when we received our first (unsolicited) American Girl catalog.  For at least a year, I was able to toss them out before my daughter ever had a chance to ask, “Ooooh Mommy, what is THAT?!! Eventually, some innocent kid at school introduced her to the world of American Girl and I’ve been paying for it ever since.  Literally.  $90 for a doll, really?  Is their hair woven from strands of gold?  Do they spit up gold coins and poop sapphires?  The lady who invented them in 1986 is named Pleasant Rowland.  Don’t even get me started….

On a more upbeat note, I’d like to pay tribute to the Holy Grail, also known as the Sears Wish Book (cue the angels singing).  When we were kids, we couldn’t wait for it to arrive in the mail.  When it did, it was all out war among my 3 siblings and I to see who could lock their hands on it first.  Eventually, my parents would let us take turns marking what we liked.  We didn’t get everything we wanted, but the act of burying our noses in the Wish Book for hours at a time was its own kind of gift.  It was a sad day when Sears killed the Wish Book.  I don’t know whose brilliant idea it was, but I’m pretty sure his middle name was Grinch.

Remember when we used to get letters in the mail?  As kids, we’d turn into pen pals if one of us went away over the summer. Even if nothing much happened, we had no problem writing letters so long that we could barely fold up them up small enough to stuff in an envelope.  When was the last time you got a letter in the mail where you had to flip it over to read the rest?  A long time, right?  There was something about seeing a friends’ thoughts in their own handwriting.  It’s not the same as email.  That said, I have to admit that I always preferred to type my letters rather than write long hand. But I had a good reason.  My letters were definitely funnier when I typed them. I don't know why, but it was true.

I will conclude with the best piece of mail I ever got.  It was a check from Sallie Mae, the Guaranteed Student Loan people.  Yes, they sent ME a check with a lovely note.  Because I had overpaid my student loan. Who does that? After 10 years of sending them money, I never thought about the day that I’d be done. That letter is in my scrapbook.  I think it’s a one-of-a-kind.  In the history of the world.