The United States Postal Service is having a rough time, financially. The news tells of layoffs, limited delivery service, and a higher price of stamps.
HOLD IT! Can you even IMAGINE our life without postal service in this country????
Think of the joy, as a kid, of receiving a birthday card from Grandma!.... Refunds from sending in box tops?... Post cards from faraway places?... Your first real love letter, reeking of cologne?
I am a HUGE supporter of the postal service. At least once a week I buy stamps, mail a package, or pick up my FREE box to wrap and send a gift away. The place is the hub for my bill paying! I never mail a bill from my own mailbox now, but prefer to drop it into the slot for "stamped mail," and see that it is on its way right THEN. (I find that there are fewer bills lost that way, frankly.)
I do not do online banking, and part of the reason is that I LIKE to write out my check and send it by mail. It gets there. I've had time to look the check over, examine it for mistakes, put on the stamp, use some of those free return address labels that I received via the postal service, and know that my bill or letter is not done by a mouse click.
I just mailed a small package to Oregon. If you have never DRIVEN to Oregon, then you may not fully appreciate just how far away Oregon IS from Ohio. It takes beaucoup de days to drive to Oregon, much less to find the address I just wrote on that package. (We're talking about a week, here. At least.) Did I mention the mountains, rivers, and bad weather? (and the stops along the way to sightsee???)
I mailed this "media mail" package for $2.82. IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD WHO WOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT PACKAGE ALL THE WAY TO OREGON FOR $2.82????
(I heard your collective, breathless "no.....!")
YOU WANT A BARGAIN? Stop looking at the mall, folks...................go to the POST OFFICE!!!! For only 44 cents, they will take your letter all the way across the country! I actually felt guilty over that package! It bordered on slave labor.
No, I do not have relatives who work for the post office. (Yet).........although I do have a friend who is a postal worker. This is not about saving her job. This is about APPRECIATING WHAT WE HAVE, using it, and not letting online banking and email reduce this marvelous service disappear from our lives.
Who has not felt a flutter in his or her heart when opening the mailbox and pulling out a stack of envelopes and magazines? Who does not have a letter from a long-lost love hidden away somewhere? (An email just isn't going to do it......)
Who hasn't wept and cried over a hideous bill that arrived just as your overdraft notice arrived in the same mail batch? Just THINK of the heart-stopping moments in your history all because of the United States Postal Service!
My fondest "mail memory" is the day my college acceptance letter arrived. Almost no such supreme joy has been personally delivered to my house! Yes, I saved it! It didn't come by email.........it's paper!
Birth announcements! Invitations that you can actually HOLD IN YOUR HAND and enjoy the anticipation of the event...........instead of closing out the screen and then thinking about it. Great Grandma's letters..........Civil War soldiers' farewells to loved ones at home.........handwritten memories, all delivered by MAIL.
You know I am not a huge proponent of Nooks, Crannies, and Kindles............I want to HOLD a book in my hand. I feel the same way about wedding invitations, love letters, and bills. I want to SEE them, reread them, and SAVE them. (And if it's a really nasty bill, I want the pleasure of RIPPING it up and shredding it..............Get it???)
If we use it, it will stay. If not, when the lights go out and all the batteries die............all of those pleasant email messages will be gone forever. And while I am an ardent emailer myself, if I had a wedding invitation to offer, or a love letter I wanted delivered, it would be signed, sealed, and then delivered by a postal worker. And it would be worth the 44 cents to know that it was being HELD in a hand of a person for whom I care.
Copyright: KP Gillenwater
