return to sender

Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. There's never a letup. It's relentless. Every day it piles up more and more, but the more you get out, the more it keeps coming. And then the bar code reader breaks. And then it's Publisher's Clearinghouse day.
-Newman, Seinfeld

The postal system is a pretty amazing thing, and I'm not just saying that because they have about eight boxes of my books in their grip right now. It's kind of amazing that you can give somebody an envelope and 41 cents, and ask them to send it to the other side of the country.

This week, I've been spending an awful lot of time in line at the post office. Before this week, mailings I did that involved the post office were very few and far between...sometimes I would go to buy stamps, and every now and then I mail cd's to people. I assumed it was the same for everyone. But so many people are mailing so many things! I like to sit there and wonder where all their stuff is going. I think that curiosity would get the best of me if I worked in a post office. I would want to see what people ordered from Amazon or what that law firm has to say to them. Also, I would want to read their magazines.

They have neat stamps out now. Look at these Star Wars stamps. A cool thing, I think, would be a machine in a post office where you go in, and it takes a picture of you. Then it prints stamps with your face on it. Today I was at Fred Meyer and saw that Ellen DeGeneres has a line of greeting cards. If Ellen can have greeting cards, I can have stamps, right?

Oh, I just Googled the stamp idea. People have already thought of that. Oh well.

Fun facts about the postal service in the United States:

• The USPS delivers more then 213 billion pieces of mail every year.
• Mail was delivered 7 days a week until 1912. Local religious leaders asked the government to close post offices on Sunday so people would go to church instead.
• When fuel costs increase one penny, the costs for USPS increase $8 million.
• Most interestingly to me, about 14 percent of the nation's population moves every year, creating more than 45 million address changes.

And a fun postal service fact from overseas:

• The Vatican post office issues a special stamp when the pope dies, and the special stamp is only valid until the new pope is elected.