Postcards from Outer Space

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night… you know, the U.S. Postal Service generally does a great job of bringing us our mail. But once in a while, since we live at 8324 Elm Street (fictitiously speaking, of course), we get mail for the people at 8324 Poplar, a block north of us. We put the envelope back into our mailbox, raise the flag, and the next day, it’s back on its way. Occasionally we get a piece of mail meant for one of our neighbors, and we just stick that in their mailbox, or –and this may shock you—hand it to them in person.

So imagine my surprise when I moseyed out to the mailbox recently, and flipping through the flyers, bills and magazines, found a postcard from Italy, addressed to my daughter. Who lives in Sacramento.

Yep, I swear I am not making this up. My son and his bride, (the former Daffodil, now my actual ‘dil’) had honeymooned in Italy, and here was a beautiful picture postcard from Capri, meant for his sister.

The address portion was clearly labeled to Rachel and family, obviously a different surname from ours, at HER street address, Sacramento, CA, proper zip code and all. What the what??? I felt like I was being pranked, Punk’d, or for those of you my age, on Candid Camera.

I literally turned around 360° in the cul-de-sac, thinking that Rob and Jessica must be in their car (yeah, they just dropped in from Washington, D.C., right?) watching me, laughing their tiny respective a**es off. Nope. No sign of pranksters.

I couldn’t process what I was seeing. How did this end up here in Missouri, addressed as it was?

As I headed down the driveway, I noticed that there was also a small envelope, a thank-you note, as it turned out, addressed to us from Rob and Jessica. Ahhh, I thought, I get it. Somehow the note card must have stuck to the postcard when they mailed them, and the postcard intended for Sacramento just piggy-backed onto our mail, ending up here. Okay, wacky and implausible, but not impossible.

Later, when I spoke to Rob, I said, “Guess what we got in the mail today?” I pretty much stunned him into silence with the answer, and that takes some doing. He will normally outwit me and anyone else foolish enough to spar with him, with one arm tied behind his back. Then I told him my theory that supposedly explained how this could happen. He listened condescendingly (a mother can tell) and then condescendingly patiently pointed out that he had actually mailed the postcard from Italy.

Now he had truly stunned ME into silence. I just assumed they had brought the postcards home with them and mailed them stateside. “No way!” I said. He confidently told me to look at the postmark. Well, that was the other thing: there WAS no postmark. It had an Italian stamp on it, but…. How did it land in OUR mailbox? I could see it going to Sacramento, and I could see it going nowhere, but seriously, how did WE get it?

Rob said, “What about YOUR postcard?” Oh, you sent us a postcard, too? It hasn’t arrived. Maybe it’s gone to Sacramento, I hypothesized…

Ten days later said postcard arrived. Beautiful scene of Capri, sweet note from the kids, and addressed to the Center of the Universe and me. Italian stamp. No postmark. I’ll never know if it got here via Sacramento.

You Don't Know How Good You've Got It!

Okay, I had something totally different in mind for today, but my pal Laura sent the following in an e-mail, and it strikes me as something y'all would enjoy.  So if you'll forgive the basic cut-and-paste, I am sharing the following with you.


If you are 30 or older, This should resonate with you.   If you're a generation beyond, we could come up with a whole other level of comparison-- perhaps we'll do that next week.


Meanwhile, here's Laura's message, with only a few edits:

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill... Barefoot... BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda…

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of hooey like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!

There was no email. We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our collective asses! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! (Kidding-- not if you wanted to stay out of 'juvey'.)

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. ‘Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, case closed!

There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOSH!!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! And a pot. That you washed. Imagine that!

And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!

And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shotgun" in the first place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!



Regards,

The Over 30 Crowd