My Postal Worker is Very Weird

The guy who runs the post office in Morrison, Carl ... well, let's just say he's a little unusual. A lot unusual. This morning I had to mail a package to my youngest brother for my mother so it would reach him in time for his birthday (it's his first year of college ... wow, unreal!). So I head into the post office at about 9 a.m. to mail the package.

I'm writing the address and he says, "So, I'm finally meeting the person behind mailbox 327! Susan, right?"

"No, it's Amber," I tell him. "You were close."

But this is not even remotely the first time I've met Carl. No, no, no. A brief history of my interactions with the fun postal workers in Morrison:

* First, before I had to sign up for a post office, my neighbor, Maja, warned me that the people at this post office "are stupid." (I believe those were her exact words.) I wasn't quite sure what that meant but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

* Second, I first met Carl when I was signing up for my PO Box. My house, which is only about a three-minute walk from the post office, does not have a mailbox simply because it's so close. I actually had to deal with Carl twice during this little episode, once when he explained to me how to go about getting a mailbox (which requires a Colorado driver's license, which led me into a strange Catch-22 situation, because I couldn't get a PO Box without a driver's license, and I can't receive mail at my house, so once the license was issued, there was nowhere for them to actually send it -- because Colorado can't make it simple and just give you the license before you leave the office, like they do in Missouri. And let me tell you: Colorado's DMV is hell on earth. If you ever have to go, bring a book, because you could easily be there for hours. I was there for four the first time I had to go, then for three when I needed the license reissued because, obviously, it never made it to me.)

* I spoke with Carl again last year in November when I had to renew my PO Box.

* I spoke with Carl again in November, when there was a note in my PO Box that I had too much mail to fit in there, and I had to pick it up from the front desk. He lectured me about checking my mailbox every day, and I told him I'd checked it the day before and it was empty (which was true; he didn't believe me). Proof that it wasn't my fault, but that rather, the post office was hanging onto my mail, came when I found the November and October issues of Glamour in the stack of mail. Magazines get to you at least two weeks before the month starts. What was a six-week-old magazine doing in this stack of mail? Hmmm.

* I see Carl (although don't necessarily talk to him) every single day when I walk in the post office to pick up my mail at my box. Except on Sunday. But he doesn't work Sunday anyway.

* I distinctly remember mailing a package (can't remember what or to whom) and hearing all about Carl's time spent in Vietnam and his post-traumatic stress disorder, and how thunderstorms wake him up (I think there had been a thunderstorm the previous night).

* Within the past two weeks, I've had to pick up a package from the front desk because the contents were damaged and leaking. Carl was very inquisitive about this package; when I returned to give him back his plastic box, he even asked me what was in it (is this legal? I wasn't sure).

* JUST LAST WEEK, I bought stamps from Carl. In fact, every single time I've mailed a package or bought stamps (except for one stamp-buying incident), it was from Carl. And last week we spent about five minutes on the stamps, because they were out of the ones I wanted and I had to select an alternative.

And he finally got to meet me this morning.

???????