It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [15]
I didn’t go back to the post office—any of them—for over a year. If I had to mail a package, I’d go to other shipping places that were way more expensive and farther away, and I bought my stamps online. But as I was taping up the box of unders for my nephew, I realized that I really didn’t want to pay twelve dollars to ship them to Phoenix. Down the street, I could do it for several bucks. It was time, I knew, to try the satellite post office again. Especially if I could save two dollars.
As I stood in line, getting closer to the counter, my heart raced, my mouth got dry, and suddenly I was next.
When she looked up and saw me, she knew. There was no mistaking it. She knew exactly who I was and that I was the Two-Cent-Stamp Bandit. I knew she was the Mean Lady. Her mouth pursed, she looked at me with disdain.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. On her wrist. Bright, colorful, and unmistakably new. An Achilles’ heel.
“That,” I said, pointing to her hand and the flashy and enormous red, orange, and black outlined dragon on it, “is a lovely tattoo.”
Frankly, I have to say that I was shocked. I don’t see too many middle-aged Korean post office ladies getting themselves all inked up with medieval symbols and legends, but here we were.
She looked down and knew there was no way out.
She smiled a teeny tiny little bit.
“Thank you,” she replied.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Those are very pretty colors.”
“I think so, too,” she added. And looked at the box. “First-class or Priority?”
“Priority,” I said. I wanted to show her that I took the post office seriously.
“Any contents that are perishable, liquid, or prohibited?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “Just little-boy’s underwear.”
Excellent! I realized. By the time I got home, the FBI would be carrying my computer out of the house. But she didn’t bat an eye.
“Have a great day!” I said before I left.
We ended that day on decent terms, but when I got home I tracked the package to make sure it had been mailed in the first place, because our trust was new, delicate, and most likely still raw in the middle. I hadn’t spent twenty-five minutes looking through irregular underwear in a store that sells matching mommy-and-baby outfits just so the lady at the post office—who I’m sure was certain that I was sending a pound of corn nuts to my husband, who gets very snacky after spending his days working on a Louisiana chain gang—could sit on my package for a week in a slippery act of revenge. Listen. She was a middle-aged Korean woman with a flaming dragon tattoo who’d kicked me out of the post office when I asked for eight dollars worth of stamps. In my book, that’s a lunatic. Who knew what she was capable of?
But I went back again, and this time I brought two packages. Both Priority. With tracking numbers. I wasn’t fooling around.
As she was getting ready to slap the post office label on the second package, someone shouted out to her from the photo department and told her she had a phone call. I watched her face drop as the person informed the Mean Lady that the call was about her daughter.
“Can you wait a minute?” she asked me, her skin tone suddenly ashen.
“Sure,” I said.
She went over to the photo department and took the phone call, then returned to the counter a couple of minutes later.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was so worried when they said it was about my daughter. But everything’s fine; she just wanted to stay at her friend’s house longer, so her friend’s mom called. I was so scared!”
“I know,” I replied. “I saw the look on your face. I’m glad everything is okay.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Thank you for being so nice about it. You’re nice. A lot of people wouldn’t have been so nice.”
I stopped for a moment.
“I know you must have to put up with a lot working at the post office,” I told her, to which she nodded vigorously.
“Some people are crazy,” she semi-whispered.
“I know. I’ve seen it. I saw a lady freak out about ‘automatic tape,’ ” I