December 19, 2014
Dear Everyone:
Happy Birthday, “Jeannie”!
“Jeannie” is recovering nicely from her surgery and is even getting
around with one or more of my “old” canes, instead of the
rather-slow-and-awkward-walker.
Meanwhile…
Many years ago I started sending a kind of
greeting card to various
friends and relatives. These
were people that I felt needed a little cheering up.
Such as a person who was contemplating ending a long-standing
relationship. Or a friend
who recently found out that one of her parents was diagnosed with a
debilitating disease.
Then there was the co-worker who suffered a horrendous family loss.
And another friend whose doctor ordered a
mastectomy “as quickly
as possible”, followed by weeks of
chemotherapy.
Sure, lots of people sent Sympathy and Get Well cards at the
time. But then what?
When you’re facing chemo three times a week, “Get Well Soon!”
doesn’t really help all that much.
And a lot of these things drag on for months, even years.
So I started scouring the greeting card racks for something “cheerful”.
Like the one with two dinosaurs sitting on a rock, surrounded by water.
It’s pouring rain and, in the distance,
Noah’s Ark is floating
away, without the dinosaurs.
One dinosaur says, “Oh, crap!
Was that TODAY?”
Another: “If I had a dollar
for every time I think of you…
I’d probably think of you a lot more!”
It’s enough to make you smile, or even laugh, just for a moment.
What I call a “Spot Of Cheer” (SOC).
Only problem is: There
aren’t really that many SOC cards around.
The card companies focus more on “Occasions”, like Birthdays and
Holidays. In fact, some
holidays have been referred to as “Hallmark Holidays”, meaning they only
exist to give the card companies an excuse to sell cards.
But I found one company, called Borealis Press, that has a whole
plethora of “All Occasion” cards.
They consist of an old photograph, sometimes with a caption,
sometimes just the picture.
Example: A group of elderly
nuns, one of whom is happily playing with a
paddle ball.
Another example: Two
middle-aged men wrestling…in
kilts.
A funny-looking bird, walking across the grass, with a quotation from
Samuel Goldwyn: “If I look
confused, it’s because I’m thinking.”
What’s more confused-looking than a bird that’s walking instead
of flying?
Most of these cards have nothing printed on the inside.
In fact, I don’t even write my name in them.
Instead, I use a little
Post-It note.
That way the recipient can pass it along to someone else who
needs a Spot Of Cheer.
Last month I went to the company’s website to order more cards.
I picked out six each of a half-dozen or so, plus some
Christmas
cards, and placed my order on November 3rd.
Borealis stuffed the lot of them all into a large envelope and
put them in the mail in
Blue Hill, Maine, on November 4th.
They also sent me an email with the Tracking Number, so I could
follow it on the Internet.
And thus began The Odyssey of the Borealis Package.
From Blue Hill, Maine, it went to
Scarborough, also in Maine.
From Scarborough to
Richmond, California.
Richmond sent it to
San Ramon.
It should have been delivered on November 6th.
But then, just as it was reaching the end of the trip, a postal worker
marked it “Undeliverable as Addressed” and “Return to Sender”.
And popped it back into the Mail System.
San Ramon sent it to San Diego.
San Diego sent it to
Oakland.
Oakland sent it back to San Ramon, where it sat for over ten
days.
When I realized The Package was apparently sitting in the San Ramon
Post
Office, I printed the Tracking Information and took it to the Post
Office in hopes that they could retrieve it from whatever shelf it was
sitting on.
They couldn’t find it, but made a copy of the Tracking Information and
said their boss would call me.
Never happened.
In the meantime, my attempt to locate The Package evidently kicked it
back into the System. San
Ramon sent it to
San Bernardino, who sent it to Richmond (again), who
sent it to, of all places,
Bell Gardens, California.
By this time, it was November 29th.
A few days later, The Package miraculously made it into my mailbox.
On December 3rd, a full month after it was ordered.
It was in one of those 2-Day Priority Mailing envelopes, the kind
that cost the same regardless of the weight.
And there was absolutely nothing wrong with the address.
Not smudged, not blurred, nada.
Nor did it ever get back to The Sender in Blue Hill, Maine.
It never even left California.
You know what the
Postal Service says in their advertising:
“If it fits, it ships!”
But it might take a side trip to
Nova Scotia.
Love, as always,
Pete
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