A Little More Local News

The last two Hitchcock movies I watched were called “Young and Innocent” and “Rich and Strange.”

P.S.

As I explained in yesterday’s entry, my neighbor from the end of the street asked me to pick up his mail this weekend. Friday was my first day on the job, and it went smoothly, but it almost ended in disaster. Here’s what happened:

After seeing the mail truck make its deliveries on our street, I stepped outside and headed to my mailbox first to retrieve my own mail (it was just a piece of junk mail); then I walked down the street until I reached my neighbor’s mailbox. But my neighbor’s mailbox shares a pole with the mailbox for the house across the street; and both boxes look the same: they are black, and they have four stickers on their front lid corresponding to each house’s address. So I looked up from the mailboxes and read the number hanging over the entryway of my neighbor’s house (the one who asked me to collect his mail) – it was 1872. Then I looked across the street and saw that the house for the other mailbox was 1873. Then I looked back at the mailboxes themselves, and, I kid you not, the address on each lid was missing its final digit: the first three of the four number-stickers were legible, but, in either case, the final sticker’s number was faded so thoroughly that it was indecipherable – so each box said “187_” with the fourth sticker being blank. I shook my head and murmured: “Only in reality does this type of thing occur.” And I thought to myself: How am I supposed to determine which box is correct? I knew that I could just open each mailbox and read the names on any envelopes it contains, but I didn’t want to look like I was a mail thief snooping around; for then someone might call the police and report my suspicious activity, which could land me in jail.

So I tried to reason out which box might belong to house 1872, since that’s the number of my neighbor whose mail I was fetching. I therefore walked down the curb to the next pair of mailboxes, whose house numbers were intact and visible; and I noted that the box on the right had an even number, while there was an odd number on the box at the left. Figuring that this pattern likely continued, I returned to the pair of boxes in my neighbor’s yard and guessed which one I should try:

Putting my hand on the lid of mailbox “187_” I began to open it slowly. My heart was racing. When I could finally see inside, I was relieved to recognize, on the topmost letter in the stack, my neighbor’s name: I had chosen the right box! 

So, after collecting its contents, I shut the mailbox’s lid and went back to my own house. I set my neighbor’s mail in a safe place, and I plan to give it to him on Monday when he returns.