Years Through A Hole

A postman comes to my door everyday around the same time. One postman, always the same postman. I have an older style mail slot that is really a hole through my front door with a neat spring hinge contraption that requires minimal effort to open and stuff the mails in. Even so, with both of his hands full, there were times the postman found it challenging to work against the force of the hinge and make the mails go through unscathed.

One time I saw a piece of mail coming through the hole, with a push-stop-and-go movement not unlike that of a woman delivering; so I walked up, opened the door, thanked the postman, and relieved him from his labor. Then he asked me why not install a big mail box, the kind that you screw on the frontage of your house like you are really expecting something big and important to go into it, and I said blah blah blah.

The hole has been there for close to forty years. I wonder, say, if the postman's father was also a postman, would he have found it just as inconvenient? And if he has, would he have innovated to enable and empower himself to face the daily challenge from a thin wire of a hinge? While I was standing there talking to him, on the spot I came up with five ideas to make life easier for myself if I were him. If it was not a problem forty years ago, why do we have to come up with a solution now?

When I was a kid, everyone wanted to grow up and become either a policeman, a postman, or a doctor. No one would have imagined in a few short decades they would grow up to have jobs writing apps to assist people wiping their asses and wasting their youth (sometimes simultaneously). Time changes. Now the postal is going on strike, and no one gives a damn. Postmen used to be vital to a community, providing a substantial and tangible value to our well being. Mail delivery is an act of service with an intrinsic unadulterated goodness woven into the fabric of a community. For every Apple, there is always a Foxconn to haunt our conscience, but what is not to love about a man coming to your front door and giving you words that you've been waiting for, sometimes for a lifetime?

The postman limped by my door this morning and inserted a piece of junkmail, something about some hearing aid technology. Hope to hear from him again soon.