Recently, a Brooklyn mail carrier was arrested with 17,000 pieces of undelivered mail in his apartment and car. In 1999, a stash of mail in a Chicago mail carrier’s home caught fire, destroying the home and killing the carrier. Mail hoarding, while unusual, is not unheard of, with stories appearing in the press on a regular basis. In almost every case, mail carriers cited the stress of their jobs as the reason for not delivering the mail.
— The New York Times, Slate.com and other sources
MARTHA: Tell me the truth, Harold. It’s the widow Gordon. She’s meeting you at the door in a neglige. And you’re delivering more than mail.
HAROLD: Don’t be silly, Martha. I haven’t seen her in months.
MARTHA: Then how do you explain …
HAROLD: … that I’ve lost 30 pounds …
MARTHA: … you don’t wear those coke-bottle eyeglasses …
HAROLD: … and there’s hair growing back in my bald spot?
MARTHA: Yes.
HAROLD: I’ve simply learned the Benjamin W. Salisbury approach to stress-free mail delivery.
MARTHA: Does it involve stiletto heels and furry boas?
HAROLD: There’s no hanky panky involved, Martha. Letter carrier Salisbury was simply ahead of his time. Like him, I’ve become a mail hoarder.
MARTHA: You’ve transferred to only delivering packages?
HAROLD: Not mail order. Mail hoarder. As in, remember when I told you not to look in the gardening shed?
MARTHA: I thought that’s where you kept the widow Gordon’s undies.
HAROLD: That was when I told you not to look in my sock drawer.
MARTHA: Don’t tell me you’re one of those mail carriers who stashes tons of mail in their homes?
(Silence.)
MARTHA: Harold?
HAROLD: You just said, “Don’t tell me …”
MARTHA: Why are you doing this?
HAROLD: For us, Martha. Hoarding mail has helped relieve the stress of mail delivery as far back as 1874, when Benjamin W. Salisbury first dumped 200 pieces of undelivered mail into the harbor at Providence, Rhode Island.
MARTHA: And how many letters in our garden shed?
HAROLD: Off the top of my head … 34,826.
MARTHA: Oh my lord.
HAROLD: That would be only 327 letters in 1874, when adjusted for inflation.
MARTHA: Why are you doing this? We have such a nice life.
HAROLD: Not as nice as you think, Martha. You have no idea of the stress I’m under. Open the door. Get out of the truck. Close the door. Open the door. Get into the truck. Close the door. Open the door, get out of the truck … you can’t imagine how easy it is to mix that up.
MARTHA: Everybody makes mistakes.
HAROLD: I hear all the little kids in the neighborhood laughing at me. It hardly adds to my dignity as a uniformed representative of United States Postal Service.
MARTHA: Harold, you are the most dignified mail carrier I know.
HAROLD: You wouldn’t say that if you watched me matching up the numbers on envelopes with the numbers on houses. Look at the envelope. Look at the house. Envelope. House. Envelope. House You can’t imagine how easy it is to mix that up, too.
MARTHA: We’ll deliver the mail in the shed together. At night. No one will know …
HAROLD: Once I tried to stuff a house in the mailbox…
MARTHA: … and we’ll get you some help.
HAROLD: … now, I deliver the letters I want to. I stop my route when I want to. I’m in control of my life for the first time since I discovered that crying would get mama and papa to change my diaper. I’m not going back to the old me, Martha.
MARTHA: I love the old you, Harold, pot belly and all.
HAROLD: And the widow Gordon?
(Silence.)
MARTHA: We ought to burn down the shed.
HAROLD: I think we can make space in the attic.
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Suddenly it all makes sense. Just relax and let go… of the mail that is. You know this also apples to e-mail readers. Just don’t open that e-mail app. Let the messages pile up. Oh, but then we’d miss your stories.
Hi Nick…
One can only imagine the stress your email reader is under. Open the email, close the email, delete the email. Open, close, delete. Open, close, delete. One mistake and there goes that email from the widow Gordon.
As for not opening email about new stories, relax. If that happened you wouldn’t be alone.
–jay
Really funny. Nice tone. Good stuff.
Hi Joe…
Thank you. Nice to be able to brighten your day. Now if you only could let Lorne Michaels know I’m available.
–jay