10.17.10
They Shoot Each Other, Don’t They?
Lesson Learned: Never go to the post office the day after a national holiday. Fair enough. My bad, as the kids said, like 10 years ago.
And as Stetsasonic said about 20 years ago, Here’s how it started:
I got on the looooong self serve line for the ONE self serve postage machine at the Bryant Park post office – you know, the post office in midtown New York that shortened its hours and now closes at 3PM every day…yeah, that one. I even went late to try to not hit the lunch rush. I guess average-to-medium minds think alike because a lot of people had the same idea.
When I finally got to the front of the line, I put my first envelope on The Machine and went through a litany of questions and response buttons so endless as to rival Catholic Mass. One down, one to go. (Which I guess is more in keeping with Judaism.) So I put my second envelope on the scale, and it wouldn’t respond with a weight. The Machine asked me to weigh my letter. I picked it up and placed it down again. I went back a screen and tried it again. I tried exerting a slight pressure on the scale, as if The Machine were a child in Dickensian England, learning how to weigh letters to earn a meagre living. There was an ever growing line of people behind me. My face was turning red. I kept pushing “Accept Weight” – ironically something I can’t do in my own life. Nothing worked. The Machine would not tell me the weight of my letter. I felt I had only one choice…
I stepped off the line.
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