As breathtaking as is the thought of the United States' infrastructure of roads, highways and expressways; also is the idea that nearly any parcel of merchandise or communication may be transferred anywhere via these passageways. Like a blood vesicle on one's fingertip has a path leading back to one's aorta, a letter in the Ozarks of Florida has a 99% chance of reaching Seattle, Washington if so addressed. Nonetheless, both the transportation routes and the system of communication are taken for granted. Advertisements, collection notices, judicial summons, etc. flock to the P.O. Box without any appendum to the effect of "Isn't this so cool?"
Of course physical mail from friends and relatives has a treasurable value. I think postcards are a pretty neat gesture, especially when my father is the featured photographer or when there is an inside joke referenced by the graphic. This past summer, a friend was working in California. Being in Wisconsin, I made use of my time in psychiatric wards sending her scores of postcards. In a short interval I had proven myself fit for the outside world, I sent her a package containing a mixed compact disc, a bag of Fisher™ pistachios and a printout of an unusually organic-looking fractal. She in turn sent me a pressed maple leaf with all colors of a leaf's life cycle represented, a couple of photos of herself taken at a photobooth, and a letter written on the back of a puzzle (I had to assemble the puzzle in order to read the letter.) This is what the U.S. Postal Service was founded for, I'd like to think.
It's difficult to maintain communication through letter writing. E-mail is the courier of choice, but this is not a composition of comparison of either's usefulness over the other. I contend both are as good as the user. I would imagine that some in the older generation keep contact with pen and paper as frequently as I fire off an electronic epic to my close friend in Chicago. An elderly friend of my mother's was bragging to me that she was in the midst of hand writing seventy-something Christmas cards. Her computer was from the year 1991, as was the operating system.
E-mail is astounding to some. It's instantaneous and worldwide, but I, as a schooled technology guru of sorts, find it all to make a lot of sense. The infrastructure it runs on is microscopic and stringy, but simple software instructions guide the data to where it needs to go. The USPS mail, however, comes from roads that represent a great deal of sweat and blood in their construction. A difference in e-mail and "regular" mail is the absence of stress in the electronic kind. I look forward to checking my e-mail for notes from friends and advertisements of the kind that rarely are sent via the postal service. Also, that exciting letter telling you whether you are scheduled for an interview with a new employer now comes in e-mail. At least it has for me. Perhaps some stress is involved with receiving this type of mailing. But, as a friend quoted someone famous, "The truth may hurt, but the truth is savory."
The stress of USPS mail comes in the form of bills. There is a moment of nervousness as my roommate hands me a stack of envelopes and says, "These came for you." I have an alternative loan out for incomplete education, and the required payments are mysteriously rising with each monthly bill. I usually let my autonomic nervous system take control of my consciousness so that I only have to watch myself open the envelope instead of live through the fearful moment. Also, ever since I was notified of a bench warrent for my arrest in response to my failing to pay a disorderly conduct ticket related to the reasons I was incarcerated in the psychiatric wards mentioned previously, I've been pretty nervous about being handed any envelope.
Curiosities in the mailbox have come in two forms. I'm pretty sure you can get porn in your e-mail's inbox, or at least links to it. It usually comes unsolicited, and people get upset. However, when a big glossy stapled stack of smut arrives unexpectedly at one's doorstep, how can you complain? My roommate did. He's had pranks played on him before. This time a thin, cheap porno mag subscription in his name began showing up. "I paid postage to have it canceled!" he said after trying to stop the flow of skin shots.
The other curiosity is something that's been coming regularly as well, but it's from being on some obscure mailing list. They are small postcards asking urgently "Have You Seen Us?" above a picture of a child and a picture of the last adult seen with the child. I remember that as a child I would stare at the picture on the milk carton or posted on a bullitin board in the mall. I would wonder what it was like to be missing. I usually imagined that the stranger had offered the child candy, had gotten into the stranger's car and was taken to dilapidated shack somewhere in a hilly, forested area. From there I had no idea. Now, with a mind full of police stories from plots of shows I've seen on television for twenty-five years, my conclusions may be no more correct, but at least a bit less naïve. I might think, you know, she might be happy with her sister or cousin or whoever that is with whom she shares a last name. Or, I'll check the date-since-missing and conclude that the poor boy might not have made it with that bearded man with the cold stare of a killer. Mostly, I just wonder if they're even let on by their captors that they are supposed to be somewhere else. Now I conclude that, if they do have the recognition that something is wrong, they should really start sending out postcards.
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