So, we sent out Christmas cards this year! Not terribly Earth shattering I know, but in the midst of these crazy times we're counting this as a win! Several of these cards even made it to their recipients before New Year's Day (which is in the top 10 personal best in even the sanest of times). I sat down at the computer and banged out a collection of syllables to create a family letter as well. You know that saying that if you gave a million monkeys a million typewriters for a million years, eventually they would bang out the complete works of Shakespeare? It turns out it only takes this monkey about an hour to bang out a Christmas letter.
After we printed our picture and folded the letter and stuffed the envelopes, we were all set to address them. Problem is, we didn't exactly know where the address book was. We've been rearranging things in the house, remodeling, painting, organizing, and disheveling. We're finding out two things. First, there are many things that we obviously don't need since they've been in boxes for a while, and we haven't missed them. Second, even though certain rooms have been done for months, we will still go back to where things used to be stored to look for them. Luckily Sylvia is much more talented in the "remembering where we moved things to" department, and we were able to find the book. I also found the paper-clipped stack of address labels we've torn off of cards that had been sent to us. (Those are always kept in the front of the junk drawer, and we all know that nothing ever changes in that thing.) And now we were on a roll! We had the letters, the pictures, the envelopes, the addresses, and we were ready to finish it up! (Almost)
I got the bright idea to put everyone's address into our new computer so we could print them out easily and be ready to go. Never mind the fact that I had never done this before. Computers make things easier, right? Several hours later we had collected and organized and sorted and eventually printed our address labels.
Getting to the finish line involved a little thoughtful reflection. "Oh, she passed this past year, and she always sent us nice cards." There was some investigative work. "I have two addresses written here. Peachtree Drive and Seafoam Way. Did they move from the orchard to the beach or vice versa?" There was also a little bit of dredging up bits of data to try to piece together a scenario that made sense. "There're just two first names and I don't recognize either of them. Are these the newlyweds who we met on our honeymoon and our only communication from then on was a Christmas card back and forth for a few years? I think we can cross them off the list." It was a project and we got them mailed in a reasonable amount of time...well before Groundhog Day!
What happened after we mailed them is what I wanted to write about today. Right away we started getting notes from friends that they had gotten our card. "Really? We just mailed it yesterday! Oh, Jeff's letter was so funny and original and insightful and powerful and awe-inspiring and well-written...Yeah, I'm not going to mention it to him since we don't want him to get a big head." (Well, I assume that's what happened) Anyway, something else happened as well. We got two envelopes back.
Normally we get a couple cards returned to us. Usually, it's because we transposed a couple numbers on the address, or we hadn't heard that someone had moved, but this year was a little different. We got one back that had three letters written boldly across the front. "WTF" I realize that these letters, in certain circumstances, mean something other than Wednesday Thursday Friday. It's rude. It's well beyond my self-appointed PG13 writing limit. And I won't be explaining the full meaning of this abbreviation here. I have to admit that my first thought upon seeing this written on an officially stamped and federally protected correspondence was, "What The ........heck?" I couldn't fathom why someone in the United States Postal Service would brazenly scratch this onto an envelope. No, that's not what happened. I shifted my focus. Maybe we had gotten the address so horribly wrong that they couldn't comprehend how these letters and numbers were supposed to be arranged. No. Then I thought, maybe the people at this address had finally reached their limit during this particular holiday season and when they got a Christmas card for the former occupant of their house it sent them over the edge! Instead of politely inscribing, "The intended recipient of this particular missive is no longer residing in this locale. Please amend your records accordingly. Have a pleasant day." as I always do...this person angrily scratched out "WTF" as a way to signal that I had better not make this mistake again...EVER!
By now you're invested.... right!?! You've got to hear how I handled this massive insult!?! Did I call my state representative? Did I relay this insult to my dozens of followers on Instabook or Facegram causing it to go viral and earn me a guest spot on a national news show? Did I stomp into the local post office and demand to speak to Ben Franklin!?! (The original Postmaster General in 1775) No! I did none of that! I looked for more clues as to who would be so ill-mannered and brash as to write almost swear words onto our mail...and that's when I saw it. The yellow label that signals it's time for a letter to go back to its source because there was a problem. In tiny writing on the corner of the sticker it said, "Unable To Forward." It turns out that someone in the post office needs penmanship lessons in order to make his U's not look like W's. I hear there's a three-day penmanship course at the local adult school. It's this next week on Wednesday Thursday Friday.
