Hold My Mail (Please!)

The U.S. Postal Service says it will discontinue Saturday mail delivery, possibly as soon as this summer.

Why stop with Saturday?

I wouldn't mind not getting mail on Tuesdays or Thursdays, either. Mondays and Wednesdays I might be able to do without as well. So I guess just deliver mail to me on Fridays---maybe every other one.

Have you looked at your mail these days? Is anything grabbing you?

It seems that all we are for a bulk of this mail is to be the middle man between the sender and the landfill. How much mail doesn't even get opened?

The question is asked everyday at our house---usually by me, since I'm the one not home during the day.

"Anything good in the mail?"

The question is a red herring, because what I really mean is, "Anything bad in the mail?"

Let's face it, how much "good" mail is there, anyway? My question says "good," but what I really mean---and my wife is on the same wave length---is, anything bad, like bills (or worse)?

Our daughter has been shopping online a lot in the past year. She enjoys buying clothes, trinkets, videos, you name it from the Net. So for her, the mail is a good thing---something to be anticipated and met with excitement.

She'll learn someday, but I'm not about to rain on her parade.

That is, of course, if the U.S. Mail stays in business long enough for her to learn that there is far more "bad" or useless mail than good.

Would you miss your mail being delivered every day of the week (save Saturday and Sunday)?



It's not even that more and more people are receiving and paying their bills online. Or that, at the very least, if they receive paper bills, they are paying them online or via phone (I do). There just isn't anything worth looking forward to in the mail anymore.

I used to have a pen pal when I was 13, 14 years old---a fellow adolescent baseball fan I met via the Baseball Digest magazine. He lived in New Jersey, I believe, a Yankees fan. We wrote back and forth several times one summer. The excitement I would feel when my mom told me that Mike Maurer (yes, remember his name) had sent me another letter was palpable.

I also wrote back and forth with my grandmother in those days. She lived in the U.P. and the letters were all handwritten. Nothing more than just updates. But again, there was anticipation and joy when another correspondence would arrive in the mail box.

Today?

Bills. Junk. Advertisements (a few that are actually useful to us).

You'd miss all that?

Frankly, I don't know how the USPS can be in such dire straits. Every time I venture into the post office the line is a mile long. But I digress.

No Saturday mail? Perfect. You can keep it all, as far as I'm concerned. Except for the stuff our daughter orders online.

Maybe I'll Google Mike Maurer. We could keep in touch.

Via e-mail, of course.

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