Dear Seinfeld…

There are moments in my life when I have to look around and just check that I haven’t somehow slipped into an episode of Seinfeld. One such moment occurred this afternoon when I needed to go to the glorious post office. Let me backtrack a little…

On Monday, I returned home from the coffee-shop and found out that I had received 3 huge boxes. The first thought that went through my mind was that this was another instance of my Amazonaholicism. One of the boxes was so beaten up that it was already open, and peering inside I noticed that it was full of plastic drug containers – thousands of them. Looking at the box again, I realized that despite the fact that it was for Mr. Eddie, the address wasn’t mine, but for an address down the road. Now what to do?

1) Go down the road to knock on the door of the drug dealer to inform him that I had his 5,ooo containers

2) Throw the boxes away and pretend it never happened

3) Build a really cool drug container sculpture

Option 3 was obviously incredibly appealing, but I decided to scope out option 1 first. The address didn’t exist. Then I remembered that I had agreed to receive ‘containers’ for a friend in the UK to ship out to them. I wasn’t thinking drug containers, but you know, they’re friends, turn a blind eye. So, I needed to ship these 3 large boxes to the UK – hence the trip to the post office.

So off on my 5 minute road-trip I went. Once inside, I went to the wooden door with a big hole in it (yes, next to the re-enforced bullet-proof glass of the counter – maybe it was bullet proof wood with a bullet-proof hole). I push the three boxes through to the old ‘gentleman’ behind the hole, and he looks sternly at them. I explain that I’ve already printed out customs forms and paid for the shipping online. He continues to look sternly at them, then starts to prod the battered-looking one.

Postie: This one doesn’t look good
Eddie: No, it doesn’t
Postie: You see, this address label will come off, and the tape just doesn’t look secure.
Eddie: I know – I’m just forwarding it on to a friend
Postie: (Imagine the most belittling voice that your parents or teachers could ever muster up) So that means that it doesn’t matter?
Eddie: Um. I didn’t say that.
Postie: Yes you did, you said you were “just” forwarding on, so you don’t care that it’s battered.
Eddie: Um. No. I said I was just forwarding it on because I am just forwarding it on (yes, in the condition that your postal workers delivered it in – a shitty one)
Postie: Well (puts the box back in the hole) – we can’t take this one, you’ll need to re-box it.

Yes, I was kinda pissed by this point, not just because I was being scolded by the elderly postie-man in front of all the class customers, but that now I have to re-package this darn box, and show the world its contents. Postie then finds some sort of compassion in his gnarly bones and asks if I want to see if the biggest box they have will work. I take the box, and it looks close in size, so I start transferring the big clear bag of drug containers in the middle of the post office.

OK, so not quite big enough. I decide that I should just remove some of the containers and take them home with me. 20 or so fewer containers, and I have the box closed, and ready for shipping. During this frivolity, an elderly gentlemen, late 70’s, has walked up to the hole in the wooden door. Scratch that – an elderly lady. Hmmm – an elderly gentleman wearing a long skirt. I wasn’t really listening into the conversation, as I was standing next to him, but basically he had come in to change his name:

Elderly Person: “Yes, I used to be John Brown, but now I’ve just become Jane Brown, and really enjoying the new me”

Cue the Seinfeld theme music…

~ by eddie on January 16, 2008.