It Looked Different on the Model (6 page)

But I loved the fact that it had a post office, because it was so close by. At the time, I was sending out a lot of mail—stickers and magnets that I shipped off to Idiot Girls around the country—and had a backlog I needed to conquer from the months my stuff was in storage.

Unfortunately, during that lapse, the post office had a two-cent rate hike, which meant that I needed to invest in additional postage. I headed off to my new satellite post office inside the drugstore and waited at the end of a long, long line.

When it was my turn at the counter, I stepped up and smiled at the lady behind it.

She smiled back.

I needed four hundred two-cent stamps. So I asked for four hundred two-cent stamps.

The post office lady looked at me like I had just asked her if she wanted to buy my sex tape. In fact, she actually gasped.

“Oh, no,” she told me, shaking her head vigorously. “I can’t give you that. Absolutely not.”

To be honest, I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t have anything to say. I did this all the time in Phoenix. One time I bought six hundred stamps, and the post office guy didn’t even look at me, let alone challenge me to a standoff and act as if I had pantomimed a lewd gesture.

“So, wait,” I replied, trying to process it, then a moment later arriving at the most obvious conclusion. “Oh, you don’t have four hundred?”

“Sure I have four hundred,” she replied. “But if I give you
four hundred, then there won’t be as many left for the next person who wants two-cent stamps.”

Again, I stood there for a moment, attempting to act like a Bounty paper towel and absorb. But it wasn’t working. Asininity was puddling all around me in quantities too vast to soak up.

I tried to appeal to her work ethic as a government employee and replied, “Well, I have to mail out four hundred envelopes and I need four hundred stamps.”

Without missing a beat, she churlishly snapped, “Well, you can’t take them all for yourself! Someone else might need some, and if I give them all to you, then I have to order more from the post office.”

“But you
are
the post office,” I tried to reason, getting frustrated. “What does it matter if I take all four hundred or if I take two hundred and the guy behind me then asks for two hundred? You’ll still have to order them.”

Then the surly came out. “No,” she informed me firmly. “I won’t do it. I’ll give you two hundred and that’s all. You can’t have them all. No.”

Quickly I weighed my options, which I quickly discovered were none. Our negotiations had hit a wall, and I was well aware that I possessed less than no power in this situation. Suddenly, however, the dastardly department of my personality presented two plans, one of which involved dynamite, mustache wax, some rope, and train tracks (all found in aisle seven), which I rejected due to financial investment, and another, much more sinister option, which I accepted.

“Okay,” I said with a wide smile. “I’ll take two hundred. Thank you very much.”

The post office lady got a very satisfied look on her face, cooled her demeanor a bit, and slid the two hundred stamps
across the counter as I, in turn, slid her my four dollars. I put my cache in my purse, smiled politely, and walked away. The wheels of the sinister plan moved forward. There was no turning back.

And then I returned the next day.

I boldly stood in line and waited my turn patiently, and when the time had come, I stepped up to the counter and said nicely, “I’d like two hundred two-cent stamps, please.”

I could actually see the anger in her face rolling to a boil.

I had her. She had to sell me the stamps. We both knew she had them. She knew I had her.

Her eyes narrowed, and her brow lowered.

“One hundred,” she said in a low voice, knowing very well that I did not have her. At all. To the contrary.

Then she pointed her finger at me and said, “Don’t you come back. Never come back!”

I was shocked. I couldn’t say anything. After closing my mouth, I gathered up my paltry one hundred stamps, turned around, and walked away.

Was I just banned from the post office? I asked myself in disbelief. Did she just ban me from the post office? She just banned me from the post office!

This is ridiculous, I thought, as I stopped myself in the aisle where all the candy that has lost its soul and turned white is kept. How can you ban me from a post office? I’m a
taxpayer
. I’m her boss! And I was going to march right back there and tell her that, but I immediately thought better of making a taxpayer proclamation and pulling a line from the Bill of Rights and distorting it like it was from the Bible or I was Rand Paul. I remembered the numerous times I had passed by this particular drugstore and seen police cars parked outside, making it clear that no one here hesitates to pick up that receiver and call
911. In fact, I think they have someone on the payroll whose job description is solely to “alert the authorities.” The store is right next to a bottle-and-can return center, meaning it’s a hobo and tweaker destination, full of savory smells and nonsensical muttering, and there’s always someone on the pay phone shouting some sort of obscenity to a dealer or a loved one. Not only had I seen cop cars haphazardly parked there, but I’d also had the vast misfortune of being in the drugstore’s checkout line when a scuffle erupted from the lotion department. Apparently, according to the person in question, some bath salts had “tumbled into his pocket.” The policemen, however, weren’t buying it, and instead of cooperating, the accused decided to struggle like he was a wild mustang being lassoed, which is never a good idea in a spot so tiny that bath salts could actually fall into an available opening in your clothing.

As I watched the cops question him, I immediately checked my own coat and pants for tubs of errant body butters.

After the first crash, the man began to scream for help, but I’ll be honest and admit I was not about to be the one who volunteered my services. The scuffle moved and ate up more space as the bath-salts plucker thrashed about and screamed louder.

“Call the police!” he demanded. “Somebody call the police!”

“We
are
the police,” one of the officers informed him, to which Mr. Salty replied, “I want my
own
police!”

But unfortunately, he was out of luck. Eugene doesn’t have that service.

Yet.

Within moments, the altercation had moved in front of the main and only entrance, which I guess was the objective, but it didn’t solve any problems for me. It was clear that the situation had the capacity to morph easily from someone who just forgot
to take their meds to the headline on the next day’s paper that touted a body count. Who knew if Mr. Salty had just come from a knife store, where switchblades may have dropped into his socks, or the bow-and-arrow store, where some may have landed behind his ears; who knew where he had been and what had dropped on him. Bullets. Chain saws. Rope and train tracks. God forbid he had been at the fireworks stand at some point, because any single measure of friction would be enough set that place aglow, and I do not doubt that between the Yankee Candle display and the body-sized sheets of gauze, bottles of gasoline and/or oxygen are fully stocked.

I quickly abandoned my position in line and scurried to the party-plates aisle, in case the thrashing began to spread even farther, because, frankly, I’d rather be crushed by a party-hat tower than gored by a curio or a Department 56 North Pole candy cane.

So, with the memory in my head that when the police cross the store threshold they no longer work for me and the paltry hundred two-cent stamps in my purse, I left the store, mumbling, “Oh yeah? You’re not the only post office in town, you know!” and then set out to discover if that was true.

Turns out it was, in fact, true, and I acted smug and felt like I had beaten the Mean Lady at her own game while standing in line at the post office downtown, despite the fact that it had taken me a half hour to snag one of the jumble of metered street spaces. Because this post office doesn’t have a parking lot. At all. And because the nineteen people in front of me in line, who had all probably been banned from the satellite station, had gotten there first.

Unlike at the drugstore post office, there is nothing to look at while you wait in line—no fake poo, no pirate condoms, no crime-scene action, nothing to distract you from the other Eugene
residents and fellow post-office patrons and their packages. It was then that I saw some amazing things.

For example, I witnessed a lady trying to cram a pound of pistachios
and
a pound of corn nuts into one regular, letter-sized Priority Mail envelope. I couldn’t figure out where that lady could possibly be sending corn nuts where there aren’t corn nuts ALREADY, unless there was a corn-nut-less province that I was unaware of. And at two pounds in a Priority envelope, it was going to cost her more money to send corn nuts someplace than the corn nuts cost in the first place (unless she was sending them to a prison, but even then, I’ll bet corn nuts are a staple in the vending machines). She ripped through three Priority envelopes before the man behind her pointed out that a box would be a better fit and there were several options eight inches away from her right foot at the center counter, which she was leaning on. She tossed the envelope aside and went in for a box, which easily fit her snack foods, but her delight soon turned to unbridled horror when she attempted to close it. Immediately, she began to complain that the box, which was free, courtesy of the post office, was not equipped with “automatic tape,” which I think meant “adhesive strip” to those people who don’t buy corn nuts by the pound. I then saw two different women with the same unique bear-claw tattoo and a middle-aged woman with bangs cut from the middle of one ear to the middle of the next, who never closed her mouth the entire time she stood in line, which, by the way, was long enough to hatch an egg. From any species.

In addition to the automatic-tape debacle, almost everyone in line had some sort of mail disaster to contend with, whether it was trying to ship vast amounts of liquids and perishable items (how long does it take for a corn nut to perish, anyway? Is it even within the realm of possibilities? I bet corn nuts have
been found in the tombs of Egyptian royalty and still taste exactly the same when unearthed), sealing a box up with Scotch tape, or arguing that a customs form was not needed for her package, “because it’s just going to
Italy.
”
^*

The next time I had to go to the post office, I went to the branch rumored to have a parking lot, hoping to avoid the downtown contingent and tattoo museum. And I did and was confronted with people who had been unemployed for a long, long time, so long that they had lost perspective of the phrase “time frame” in any conceivable meaning, even though I could easily measure the duration of their life span left on Earth with my fingers. For example, at this post office, I waited in line behind patrons who liked to round out every money-exchanging transaction with a nice, pointless conversation about a) are Disney stamps more expensive than regular stamps; b) what is the difference between a book of stamps and a sheet of stamps; and c) if they write a check, can they write it over the amount and get seven dollars and forty-two cents back?

It was then that I realized it completely wasn’t fair for anyone to say ever again that post office employees are slightly askew, because if you were dealing with morons demanding automatic tape for their corn-nut packages day in and day out, things might get a little sketchy for you, too.

I didn’t go back to the post office—any of them—for over a year. If I had to mail a package, I’d go to other shipping places that were way more expensive and farther away, and I bought my stamps online. But as I was taping up the box of unders for
my nephew, I realized that I really didn’t want to pay twelve dollars to ship them to Phoenix. Down the street, I could do it for several bucks. It was time, I knew, to try the satellite post office again. Especially if I could save two dollars.

As I stood in line, getting closer to the counter, my heart raced, my mouth got dry, and suddenly I was next.

When she looked up and saw me, she knew. There was no mistaking it. She knew exactly who I was and that I was the Two-Cent-Stamp Bandit. I knew she was the Mean Lady. Her mouth pursed, she looked at me with disdain.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. On her wrist. Bright, colorful, and unmistakably new. An Achilles’ heel.

“That,” I said, pointing to her hand and the flashy and enormous red, orange, and black outlined dragon on it, “is a lovely tattoo.”

Frankly, I have to say that I was shocked. I don’t see too many middle-aged Korean post office ladies getting themselves all inked up with medieval symbols and legends, but here we were.

She looked down and knew there was no way out.

She smiled a teeny tiny little bit.

“Thank you,” she replied.

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Those are very pretty colors.”

“I think so, too,” she added. And looked at the box. “First-class or Priority?”

“Priority,” I said. I wanted to show her that I took the post office seriously.

“Any contents that are perishable, liquid, or prohibited?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “Just little-boy’s underwear.”

Excellent! I realized. By the time I got home, the FBI would be carrying my computer out of the house. But she didn’t bat an eye.

“Have a great day!” I said before I left.

We ended that day on decent terms, but when I got home I tracked the package to make sure it had been mailed in the first place, because our trust was new, delicate, and most likely still raw in the middle. I hadn’t spent twenty-five minutes looking through irregular underwear in a store that sells matching mommy-and-baby outfits just so the lady at the post office—who I’m sure was certain that I was sending a pound of corn nuts to my husband, who gets very snacky after spending his days working on a Louisiana chain gang—could sit on my package for a week in a slippery act of revenge. Listen. She was a middle-aged Korean woman with a flaming dragon tattoo who’d kicked me out of the post office when I asked for
eight dollars worth of stamps
. In my book, that’s a lunatic. Who knew what she was capable of?