Going Postal
Today as I was standing outside watching Lauren learn the stops and starts of riding a bicycle with brakes, our mailman pulled up with a package for us (a package from daddy for Aislinn’s birthday). I guess it was insured or certified, because I needed to sign something, and as the mailman organized whatever papers he needed to give me, we had a little chat about Lauren riding the bike. When I told him that I had run over her tricycle, he said “Oh, so you had to go buy that one today I bet.” I told him that it was her sister’s bike that she was trying out to see if she was ready for a big bike. He then said “Well, my grandson is eight years old and he can’t ride a bike yet.” I wasn’t really sure what to make of that, but then he said “I found a brand new Huffy bike out at the curb on trash day because someone didn’t know how to put the chain back on.” I said “Wow, that’s strange,” and the mailman said, “Do you want it?”
Our mailman is very, very peculiar. He recently cut off his scraggily long grey ponytail, but still I get the impression that he may have smoked a little too much wacky tobbacky in his day. Whenever I meet him outside, he says odd things that I have to think about before I can answer, but before I am done thinking he has scurried off down the block. One day when I was in the kitchen concentrating on a recipe or something from one of the kids’ schools, the mailman rang the doorbell and startled me. When I looked through the storm door at him, he was pointing and laughing at me, “Hee Hee, I saw you jump! HEE HEE HEE!!” I was more puzzled than annoyed by that, but it strengthened my belief that he was a few cards short of a deck. We live on a corner of a t-intersection, and our house is at the end of our mailman’s route. The street that runs perpendicular to ours has a different mailman, who is the sort of mailman that the postal service would like you to imagine when you think of postal workers. He always waves and shouts hello to me, even though I’m not on his route. When we pass on the street he asks things like “How are you today?” or “Beautiful weather isn’t it?” not things like “Do you think that squirrel could outrun a bunny rabbit?”
Somehow, the fact that my mailman is nutty and the mailman right across the street is normal is pretty much an ideal metaphor for my life. The crazy people always end up on my block, on my airplane, at my officer’s wives coffees. Where are all the normal people and why am I never in a place where I would meet them? All over my neighborhood I see regular looking women pushing strollers and walking dogs. But somehow none of these regular looking people live near me. The woman next door has a mullet and fashions straight out of 1984, and she walks back and forth to the bus stop jabbering away on a hands free cell phone, like she is conducting important business (although not a single snippet of conversation I have heard sounds important or even coherent). The woman behind me has red hair that has been dyed two different colors (not because she’s edgy but because she probably didn’t realize they were different until she came out in the sunlight) and a huge tiger tattoo on her back. When I attempted to make small talk, she demanded to know if I worked, and when I said that I hadn’t for a while she asked “Were you a professional?” What sort of question is that? Why don’t I meet the women who say, “I love those shoes!” not “I’m going to stop working at the hospital so I can throw ‘passion parties.’?”
I know my sisters both think they can one-up me when it comes to stories of the crazy people we meet at bars or sporting events or just walking through parking lots, and I concede that the trophy for strangest encounter passes back and forth between us with some regularity. Shortly after my sister Erin posted this encounter, my sister Carroll forwarded me an e-mail she received inviting her to a meeting of NINO (“Nine In, Nine Out: a group of babywearing fans of all different types that have a common interest---wearing our children"). Whenever we go out together the combined force of our nutjob magnetism usually conjures up some drunk doofus who wants to sit down at our table and attempt to charm us, when all we want to do is have a drink and a little quiet.
Anyway, when the mailman offered me the bike he found in the trash, I didn’t know how to react, because if I said no, he might expect a reason why not, and I didn’t have one, so I said “Sure, if you don’t want it.” Now this awkward situation is out there, waiting for a resolution. In a perfect world, the mailman will drop off the bike tomorrow and I can thank him, and that will be the end of it. But what if he doesn't? What if he keeps telling me about it but never brings (similar to the way my boss kept telling me he was buying me a wedding present and never did, what a jackass, but I digress...) and the situation is never resolved? What if the bike is too big for my kids, and then they can't use it, and then wonders why I accepted it if we weren't going to use it? Hopefully he won't ask why we're not using it, but what will I say if he does?
And that right there is probably why the odd birds will always think they’ve found a friend in me. I don’t want to hurt their feelings or make them feel uncomfortable, so I make myself uncomfortable instead. Presumably while I am accommodating the nutty faction, the members of the regular stroller pushing and dog walking faction are meeting and making plans and moving on without me. I guess there are other explanations to my situation which I haven’t really considered. Obviously, the problem could be that I am such a weirdo that the normal people on the block are avoiding me. The problem could be that the normal looking people that stroll by with their kiddies and dogs are actually raving lunatics that manage to pull off the “normal look,” and if I met them I'd find them as crazy as the mullet-headed tattooed types I normally attract. The problem could be that the people I consider odd are actually considered normal by the rest of the general population. The problem could be that I have no idea what normal is since I spend my days surrounded by my kids who are definitely looking at the world from a different angle.
However, probably the most likely reason I attract the wacky element of society is that if they are nice, I will be friendly to them. I spent nine years (counting kindergarten) in a toxic, clique-infested grade school, and it scarred me to the point that I am absolutely opposed to leaving anyone out. One day (back when I was a professional) a coworker invited me to go out for drinks after work, which I thought was nice, until she added “We are asking all of the cool people to go.” That was a dealbreaker for me. Since college my new rule of thumb has been that if cool people need someone to exclude, I’ll always volunteer to be excluded. I don’t want to be on the inside looking at the “losers” outside (to a degree that it is almost my life philosophy). After wasting so much of my childhood worrying about whether I was ever going to be in the cool crowd, I can’t even stand the thought of being a part of it now. I'm definitely not some sort of saintly person, I'm really not even what people would consider very nice, but at least I can claim that I am inclusive and that I don't rule out friendship without a reason(except of course with Jason Kennedy, the producers of ER and Grey's Anatomy, terrorists, and the guy who came to remove the dead squirrel last Friday).
Our mailman is very, very peculiar. He recently cut off his scraggily long grey ponytail, but still I get the impression that he may have smoked a little too much wacky tobbacky in his day. Whenever I meet him outside, he says odd things that I have to think about before I can answer, but before I am done thinking he has scurried off down the block. One day when I was in the kitchen concentrating on a recipe or something from one of the kids’ schools, the mailman rang the doorbell and startled me. When I looked through the storm door at him, he was pointing and laughing at me, “Hee Hee, I saw you jump! HEE HEE HEE!!” I was more puzzled than annoyed by that, but it strengthened my belief that he was a few cards short of a deck. We live on a corner of a t-intersection, and our house is at the end of our mailman’s route. The street that runs perpendicular to ours has a different mailman, who is the sort of mailman that the postal service would like you to imagine when you think of postal workers. He always waves and shouts hello to me, even though I’m not on his route. When we pass on the street he asks things like “How are you today?” or “Beautiful weather isn’t it?” not things like “Do you think that squirrel could outrun a bunny rabbit?”
Somehow, the fact that my mailman is nutty and the mailman right across the street is normal is pretty much an ideal metaphor for my life. The crazy people always end up on my block, on my airplane, at my officer’s wives coffees. Where are all the normal people and why am I never in a place where I would meet them? All over my neighborhood I see regular looking women pushing strollers and walking dogs. But somehow none of these regular looking people live near me. The woman next door has a mullet and fashions straight out of 1984, and she walks back and forth to the bus stop jabbering away on a hands free cell phone, like she is conducting important business (although not a single snippet of conversation I have heard sounds important or even coherent). The woman behind me has red hair that has been dyed two different colors (not because she’s edgy but because she probably didn’t realize they were different until she came out in the sunlight) and a huge tiger tattoo on her back. When I attempted to make small talk, she demanded to know if I worked, and when I said that I hadn’t for a while she asked “Were you a professional?” What sort of question is that? Why don’t I meet the women who say, “I love those shoes!” not “I’m going to stop working at the hospital so I can throw ‘passion parties.’?”
I know my sisters both think they can one-up me when it comes to stories of the crazy people we meet at bars or sporting events or just walking through parking lots, and I concede that the trophy for strangest encounter passes back and forth between us with some regularity. Shortly after my sister Erin posted this encounter, my sister Carroll forwarded me an e-mail she received inviting her to a meeting of NINO (“Nine In, Nine Out: a group of babywearing fans of all different types that have a common interest---wearing our children"). Whenever we go out together the combined force of our nutjob magnetism usually conjures up some drunk doofus who wants to sit down at our table and attempt to charm us, when all we want to do is have a drink and a little quiet.
Anyway, when the mailman offered me the bike he found in the trash, I didn’t know how to react, because if I said no, he might expect a reason why not, and I didn’t have one, so I said “Sure, if you don’t want it.” Now this awkward situation is out there, waiting for a resolution. In a perfect world, the mailman will drop off the bike tomorrow and I can thank him, and that will be the end of it. But what if he doesn't? What if he keeps telling me about it but never brings (similar to the way my boss kept telling me he was buying me a wedding present and never did, what a jackass, but I digress...) and the situation is never resolved? What if the bike is too big for my kids, and then they can't use it, and then wonders why I accepted it if we weren't going to use it? Hopefully he won't ask why we're not using it, but what will I say if he does?
And that right there is probably why the odd birds will always think they’ve found a friend in me. I don’t want to hurt their feelings or make them feel uncomfortable, so I make myself uncomfortable instead. Presumably while I am accommodating the nutty faction, the members of the regular stroller pushing and dog walking faction are meeting and making plans and moving on without me. I guess there are other explanations to my situation which I haven’t really considered. Obviously, the problem could be that I am such a weirdo that the normal people on the block are avoiding me. The problem could be that the normal looking people that stroll by with their kiddies and dogs are actually raving lunatics that manage to pull off the “normal look,” and if I met them I'd find them as crazy as the mullet-headed tattooed types I normally attract. The problem could be that the people I consider odd are actually considered normal by the rest of the general population. The problem could be that I have no idea what normal is since I spend my days surrounded by my kids who are definitely looking at the world from a different angle.
However, probably the most likely reason I attract the wacky element of society is that if they are nice, I will be friendly to them. I spent nine years (counting kindergarten) in a toxic, clique-infested grade school, and it scarred me to the point that I am absolutely opposed to leaving anyone out. One day (back when I was a professional) a coworker invited me to go out for drinks after work, which I thought was nice, until she added “We are asking all of the cool people to go.” That was a dealbreaker for me. Since college my new rule of thumb has been that if cool people need someone to exclude, I’ll always volunteer to be excluded. I don’t want to be on the inside looking at the “losers” outside (to a degree that it is almost my life philosophy). After wasting so much of my childhood worrying about whether I was ever going to be in the cool crowd, I can’t even stand the thought of being a part of it now. I'm definitely not some sort of saintly person, I'm really not even what people would consider very nice, but at least I can claim that I am inclusive and that I don't rule out friendship without a reason(except of course with Jason Kennedy, the producers of ER and Grey's Anatomy, terrorists, and the guy who came to remove the dead squirrel last Friday).
posted by Shannon at 10:56 PM
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