the mail

Growing up, we got our physical mail delivered, six days a week, in a gray metal box with a red flag, that was staked into the ground across a busy two-lane highway. It was always high adventure to brave the traffic and slip over to find whatever daily treasures may come our way, mind you as a child the treasures were few and far between! 

I do remember at some point in my "writing career", let's say age 10, I began sending entries to "Life in These United States" - a section in Reader's Digest that featured humorous true happenings that readers sent in and got paid $50 for each entry printed. From that vantage in life I thought I had a lot to offer RD!! So I would faithfully write up the hilarious incidents - and I do mean "write" so imagine the tip-off to the editors! And after I would send them, the wait for the mail began - because obviously I had already spent the fifty bucks! Sadly, I waited in vain.

But, in addition to bills and advertisements,  the gray mailbox provided lifelines to parents lonely for their college children, love letters for adolescent teens, birthday greetings all up and down the age spectrum as well as invitations to weddings, parties, Stanley products demonstrations, graduations - the whole of life funneled through that narrow metal box.

Such a small, once-a-day passage compared to the avalanche of communication that now spews out in our palms wherever we are, every second of our 24/7 existence!