One of my biweekly rituals is to walk to the local post office and deposit envelopes containing stickers for Sinisterhood Patreon subscribers into the blue metal mailbox that sits out in the parking lot. I also go inside and check our P.O. box. I don’t mind doing either of these things because it makes me feel grateful to tangibly interact with people through physical mail. Also most of the time, I don’t have to talk to anybody.

The only time I mind is about once every two months when I’ve run out of stamps, and I am forced to go inside. This week was one of those times. Yes, I went inside the post office a couple of days before Christmas. A normally rough time of year made even worse by 2020.

Because of social distancing, customers are made to line up six feet away from each other, separated by yellow lines on the ground. This means the line snakes all the way through the place, toward the back near the P.O. boxes. I took my place in the way back of the line and surveyed my fellow customers.

A young couple came in the first set of glass doors and lingered for a moment in the entryway. I saw them talking back and forth, conspiring. The woman had a shiny black bun on her head and foisted a brown box the size of a microwave into her companion’s hands. He was around six feet tall with soap opera star hair and wide blue eyes. He pulled up his mask, wrapped his leather jacket arms around the box, and headed inside, leaving her to wait behind the glass doors. Except when he came inside, he didn’t take his place in line like the rest of us. He marched right up to the counter.

Oh fuck this guy, I thought. He placed the plain brown parcel on the counter before a female postal worker and ripped off a label receipt. She smiled at him and slid the box toward herself on the counter while she continued helping someone else.

Ok so maybe he pre-labeled his box and that’s why he jumped the line, but still, why had he walked so quickly and with such purpose to the front of the line? What was in the box that was so important? So time sensitive? Probably an explosive, I thought. I got nervous and looked toward his female companion in the entryway, her eyes glued to him. Was she the lookout, helping him while he delivered this box of destruction? Was I far enough away from the counter not to be horribly disfigured when the device inevitably detonated?

When he burst back through the first set of exit doors, I heard her ask, “Did you get the receipt? We need the receipt for the tracking information.”

“Yes, I got the receipt,” he said, yanking off his mask. Ah, not terrorists. Just another couple, snapping at each other about holiday logistics.

I turned my attention toward the man in front of me. He had on dingy blue jeans with frayed hems that rested on top of his black leather sneakers, streaked white with paint. His black nylon jacket was wrinkled up against his waist. He clutched a small rectangular box to his chest, wrapped in a worn paper envelope. His nose was perched just outside the top of his mask like a small, pale, flaccid penis. His hair, gray straw, peeked from beneath the worn beanie crammed on his head.

The real thing that got me was that he insisted on standing less than a foot from the person in front of him. Back the hell up, dude, I thought. I was sure that when the line moved, he would leave a little space. But, no. We all marched forward, and he maintained his excessively close distance to the guy in front of him. 

I know a lot of people bitch and moan about social distancing, but I, for one, love it. I don’t like anyone being near me or touching me. I hope even after we have widespread vaccine adoption and the eradication of the virus, we keep it up. I don’t need another table right up next to mine at a restaurant, and I sure don’t need a strange man with his nose up my ass at the post office.

As we waited, the man fondled various envelopes and boxes on a nearby display. Picking them up, rubbing his fingers over their surfaces, holding them close to his face to study them. Jesus Christ, I thought. You may as well just put them in your mouth. Between the exposed nose, the groping of the supplies, and how close he was to the next guy in front of him, I decided I hated this man. Merry Christmas!

As the line moved, the man in the beanie took his spot at the counter in front of the female postal worker who had accepted the brown box. I ended up just a few feet away, in front of a postal worker named Darryl, from whom I have ordered an ungodly number of stamps over the past few years. As Darryl counted out my many stamps, I listened to the other postal worker as she helped the man in the beanie.

“Will this make it all the way to Bowling Green, Kentucky?” he asked. “It’s a box of chocolates for my daughter.”

“Oh yes,” the postal worker said. I’ve seen her before. She’s relentlessly helpful and patient. “It’ll make it,” she reassured him.

“It’s only a box of candy,” the man said, sounding ashamed. Then he quietly added, “The insurance company is trying to take my house. Paid a thousand dollars to stop it from happening. Still wanted to get my daughter a little something for Christmas.”

My heart melted. Dammit.

“I’m so sorry,” the postal worker told him. “Your package will get there.” She took his worn paper envelope and transferred the candy to a hard flat-rate box. “This’ll save you on shipping, and it’ll keep the candy safe, too.”

“Thank you so much,” the man said, his nose still lying limp outside of his mask.

When I turned my head to look, I saw him differently. Not as a thoughtless person who runs around with his nose hanging loose. Not as a selfish monster standing too close in a line or manhandling shipping supplies. I saw him as a dad, going through a rough patch, so focused on getting his daughter something, anything, that his mind had been somewhere else. I imagined him at the adjacent Walgreens, carefully choosing those chocolates, paying with whatever money he scraped together, and heading to the post office to get them all the way to Kentucky by Christmas. He hadn’t been pawing at those packages to spread his germs, he was worried whether the small gift would make it to her in one piece.

I also realized if he was sending the candy all the way to Kentucky, that must mean he wouldn’t be going himself. I had to stop myself from imagining what his Christmas would look like and instead silently wished for him to be able to keep his house.

“Will that be all?” Darryl asked me. I told him it was and paid as I folded the pages of stamps into my fanny pack. Then I left, choosing to walk all the way to the outdoor mailbox where I slipped the stickers in the slot.

It’s pretty magnificent to think about how far all these things we mail will go – Kansas, Washington, Canada, Australia, Austria. And to think about how much the post office does – those people behind the desk every day, helping every single person with their precious cargo, even if it’s something as simple as making sure a box of chocolates makes it to Bowling Green, Kentucky.

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