Man, I loved me some Blue’s Clues.
This post, however, is not about Steve and Blue and Magenta and Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper and Paprika. It is about good old snail mail. Remember that? People actually communicated like that. Used pens and paper and whatnot (emphasis on the h). As a child, it was one of my greatest joys to get the mail.
I grew up living next door to my grandparents. We lived in the country. The COUNTRY. We lived on over an acre and there was a farm around the corner country. Deer grazing at the bottom of the yard country. You get the picture. Oh, no street name or house number country. Just a rural route and a box number. That my parents shared with my grandparents. I can’t remember what year it was when they finally named our road and gave us house numbers, but I remember it being about calling 911 and having emergency personnel be able to find us. Although, truthfully, everyone knew where everyone else lived or gave directions by landmarks. For example, take 981 South until the cemetery on your right. Turn right at said cemetery and go 7/10ths of a mile and look for the house with Christmas lights on the left hand side.
But anywho, the mail. I loved to get the mail in the summer and sometimes during the school year because the mail would sometimes come really late. More often than not, my grandparents would indulge me in my little girl silliness. I was spoiled in my mail watch also. Gram and Pops installed a little yellow flag on a spring that they picked up that, when the door to the mailbox was opened, would pop up to let you know you had mail. So I would look out our front window down to the bottom of the yard to see if the mail had come when I thought I heard the mail truck go by.
After getting the mail, I would go to my grandparents’ house to sort it out. Funny, I almost never went in their front door. I would go around the back because the front door is for visitors. Typically, my grandfather would be sleep watching a soap opera and my grandmother would be sitting at the kitchen table doing a word search. OMG, sidebar.
I would do word searches with my Gram all the time. It’s partially due to her that I have this love of puzzles and word games. Well, one day we’re sitting at the kitchen table doing a word search and I am kinda leaning over her arm. Much to my horror, a dried up booger fell out of my nose and right into the center of the puzzle. Gram never said a word. Brushed the boog onto the floor and circled the next word.
I’d sort the mail out with my grandmother, and then, if I wasn’t going back up to the house right away, I’d put our mail on top of the fridge with part of the envelope sticking out. It was our little yellow flag inside the house.
Jump forward 30-ish years. I still love getting the mail. I love getting mail. Even when it’s junk. I mean, I realize that there’s a waste factor involved. But for me, it’s the difference between having a book in my hand as opposed to my Kindle. Luckily, hubby indulges me in this level of silly also. In the decade and change we’ve been cohabitating, pretty sure I can count on one hand the number of times that he’s gotten the mail if I didn’t specifically ask him to. I am a special star. I know.
How’s about it? Got a quirk you wanna share?