Checking the mail - the thrill is gone
Wednesday, June 29, 2022 at 08:26AM
Our mailbox sat at the end of our driveway of the farm on which I grew up. Checking the contents was a daily thrill, even when most days had nothing addressed specifically to me. Christmas catalogs, newspapers, even the odd personal letter or card, could all be found now and then in that old steel half tube sitting on a post. When the flag was down, you knew the mailman (and it was always a man), had been by.
Nearly every morning now I get an email from the USPS telling me what mail I can expect to see delivered today. Scanned images of envelopes are included. This information saves me the short walk down the street to where my mailbox, along with a dozen or so of my neighbors’, squats in the shade.
I get fewer than a dozen pieces of mail each week. And 90% of the ones I do get, go directly into the recycling bin in my garage. Most are requests for money - from charities, from alumni associations, from service organizations. You give once, you get mailers forever. Cable TV companies urge me to switch; appliance dealerships urge me to get a new furnace; hardware stores urge me to take advantage of their current sale. Catalogs, usually full of women’s clothing, round out my big mail days. Ah, if only I were a cross-dresser…
So when Congress looks to reduce the post office budget, I more or less shrug. Mail delivery once a week would be fine with me. Amazon has its own trucks. I get newspapers and magazines online. My bills come via email. Even greeting cards have gone digital. And it works the other way too - I go through less than a book of stamps a year…
Is mine the last generation that companies will market to using paper and the mail? For the sake of trees that give their lives for paper pulp and for the sake of the environment being choked by mail truck exhaust, I sincerely hope so.
Reader Comments (2)
Like you, it has been a long time since I looked forward to the physical mail. We get a lot of clothing catalogs directed at my wife, with a few misdirected to me. But the numbers there have been declining in the last few years, since I discovered Catalog Choice. Great service that will contact the catalog people and tell them to stop sending their stuff.
Really the only important items in our mail are prescriptions. Our HMO not only encourages mail delivery but offers a small discount for using it. But even there, we could plan ahead enough that fewer delivery days would not cause a problem. I'm sure, however, that is not everyone's experience.
Thanks for the tip on Catalog Choice. I'd not heard of it before.
Doug