Going Postal

I want to apologize in advance to any of you even remotely affiliated with the United States Postal Service. (These days it’s hard not to throw a rock and hit someone who is.) But this romantic tale of woe is in no way an indictment of our US of A, or its crackpot mail delivery system. It’s just that this particular portion of my life took place one early Saturday morning at a Chicago post office facility. The facts remain as is. Nothing has been changed.

I was going to be a postman (mail carrier, if you want to be pc about it). My latest brilliant idea, at the end of a long list of equally brilliant ideas – government and city options, including librarian’s assistant (book stacker) and transportation management associate (meter maid). There was definitely something oddly romantic about forced exercise as employment. On a beautiful day, my postal shorts and my Ipod, delivering the goods to everyone’s waiting box. Sun shining on my good fortune. You mean, someone would actually pay me to do this?! What a concept! I mean, I had conveniently blocked out the notion of rabid dogs, Chicago’s brutal winters, snow and flooding rain. None of that was considered. I’m not particularly sure if I believe that whole myth about ‘neither rain nor sleet nor…” anyways. I sometimes don’t get my mail on a good day. Maybe my mail man stopped off for a 2 margarita lunch at Garcia’s down the street. I don’t know. But my mail delivery was anything but consistent. If anything, my election to the prestigious position of mail carrier would be an improvement to the established system. But first, I had to take a test.

That’s right. Unlike other normal jobs where you merely send in a resume, have an interview and be done with it, if I truly wanted to deliver the mail, I would have to take a test to prove my worthiness. I was concerned. I haven’t had to prove anything in roughly 7 years. Now I was expected to do the whole ‘2 #2 pencils, no electronic devices and no large bags of any kind’ thing. (Not to get off the subject, but have you even seen a #3 pencil, or a #1 pencil? I never have understood that one.)

Anyway, this test was not your normal aptitude diagnosis. It involved matching labels, finding address errors in seconds and learning a hell of a lot of zip codes. (Do you realize how many zip codes there are just in Chicago?) But, there was a study guide, so…I studied. For the first time in 7 years. And I was prepared to take the postal exam #473.

It was 6:50 in the a.m. They checked my id. They checked it again. Four times. Can’t fault them for being thorough. A lot of crazy people come through the postal system – I imagine. Then they ushered me, via armed security guard, up eight floors (we took an elevator, of course), into a room of people I didn’t know. (Which is not completely true. It’s really just a set-up, so when I give you the big ‘except’…you’ll be sufficiently primed for the big revelation.)

Except Natasha. I knew Natasha. Though I had not seen her in 7 years. Grad school. My creative non-fiction writing class. With Jim Bruner. She’s a girl I went out with. Once. As a group. Some beers with her. And others. We went to see another classmate, who was doing a turn as Deborah in David Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” on a tiny stage in the back of Chico’s Pizza. We (Natasha and I) had exchanged a few looks that night. We also had a singular one-on-one conversation for about 5 minutes. Talked about our final class project between the play’s 2 acts and that was that. She intrigued me (as many do), and the fact of the matter is I should have made more of an effort with her. But I never did. The semester ended. We both graduated with liberal arts degrees. And here I was – 7 years later – taking the postal exam with her.

Of course, it was a piss-poor scenario to rediscover the woman who very well could have been the light of my life. There was to be no talking and no looking around. We received our two approved sheets of white scrap paper. The timer was set and we began.

She was sitting directly in front of me. I tried to get her to turn around, but it was kind of difficult in such a controlled environment. I utilized the whole ‘dropping my pencil’ bit, loud sneezing bouts - her name cleverly couched within the outburst - but to no avail. She wasn’t budging and one of the test monitors was looking at me cross-eyed. I was dangerously close to being disqualified and I couldn’t risk it. I decided to bear down, finish the exam and take my chances with Natasha later. Brilliant idea, I thought. But it was the last lucid thought that passed through my mind.

I was gone. The timer was tick-tick-ticking, but my focus on anything related to the postal arts had completely fallen out of my head onto the dirty faux carpet, and was being ground in by the pacing test monitors with their crooked eyes and crooked teeth. Agony. Natasha had consumed me in an instant and I just could not bring myself to match a single, damn address. Fuck these tricky zip codes. I would never be a postman.

I sat there – abiding my call to silence – pencils steady – a drone– until a final time was called. I turned in my exam. There was a serious of circles I had colored in with my #2 pencil. They had the design of a sad clown. I was that sad clown. At least I could drown my sorrows with Natasha. Maybe grab a couple of early afternoon drinks. Pick up where we left off 7 years ago. She started to rush off, but I caught her in the hallway before our descent back down to ground level.

“Natasha…hey…remember me? Professor Bruner’s class? It’s been a while. How have you been? This is crazy, right? The postal exam? You and me? Who could have thought it? You okay? Still writing and stuff? Thought we could…I don’t know… ”

I think that’s all I said. Might have been more. Who knows? My synapses were just beginning to fire again. She turned and looked at me. It was not the look she had given me in Chico’s 7 years ago. It was the look of confusion. The look of dismay. The look of a soon-to-be post-woman. And she was not happy.

“Do I know you?” She did, of course. But she made this little clipped sound at the end of her question. It was the sound of disgust. For me, it was the sound of failure. Supreme failure. She moved away from me slowly, and with skepticism, and proceeded down the hallway with the other post-exam revelers. There was no further acknowledgment. I had forfeited all hopes of government employment on a girl from grad school who wouldn’t even acknowledge the mere remembrance of me. And now it was all gone. I wasn’t fit to carry mail.

I reached into my breast pocket and grabbed my alternate #2 pencil – the one with the sharper point – and calmly stabbed myself in the neck. I think this is what they call ‘going postal’. Oh well, on to my next brilliant idea.