I’m in the habit of doing a lot of dumb things, but this
past week, I hit two home runs in the major-league ball park of stupidity.
First of all, for the second time in as many snowstorms, the
town’s plow viciously attacked my mailbox and left it lying in a heap on the
side of the road. The first time, it still had mail in it. The second time, it
was empty – which means either the mail hadn’t been delivered yet…or I’ll find
my electric bill hanging somewhere on a tree branch during the spring thaw.
The first time, I managed to nail the mailbox back onto its
wooden post. It took about a half-hour and some nearly frostbitten fingers, but
I reattached it. This second time, however, for some reason I
couldn’t hit a nail even if I’d used a sledgehammer.
After an hour of kneeling on the frozen ground with my head
inside my mailbox (I have a huge, oversized mailbox that fits my huge, oversize
head) as I attempted to hammer some long nails into the base, all I succeeded
in doing was bending three nails and whacking my thumb.
“I give up!” I finally cried out loud, flinging the hammer.
I live in the middle of nowhere and my mailbox is the only
one on the road for a half-mile, so I was pretty sure it was directly targeted
by the town’s plow in some fiendish form of a mailbox demolition derby.
Anyway, there I was, still kneeling in front of the mailbox
(mainly because I couldn’t get up at that point, my legs were so stiff)
swearing at the box as it teetered precariously on the platform with a bunch of
bent nails banged halfway into it, when I heard a voice behind me ask, “Are you
okay?”
Considering that my nearest neighbor is a coyote, I wasn’t
certain whether I should be afraid…or admit that my brain had frozen to the
point where I was hallucinating. Hesitantly, I peered over my shoulder to see a
very handsome man standing there.
Well, if this is a hallucination, at least it’s a good
one, I thought.
“Um, I’ve spent the past hour trying to nail my mailbox back
onto this post,” I said in a tone that sounded more whiny than I’d intended.
“And all I’ve managed to do is bend a bunch of nails and whack my thumb. So I’m
giving up!”
“Here,” he said, flashing a smile worthy of the best
toothpaste commercial, “let me do that for you.” He bent to pick up the hammer I’d tossed, and within five
minutes, had pounded at least four nails into the box.
He grabbed the mailbox and shook it. “There – that’s sturdy
now. You should be all set.”
“Till the plow comes by again,” I said, frowning. Then,
before he walked away and disappeared from my life as swiftly as he’d appeared,
I thanked him and, on an impulse, hugged him.
“Any time,” he said, smiling and returning the hug.
As I watched him walk off, I found myself actually wishing
the plow would come by again and wipe out my mailbox.
That same night, I decided to tackle my income taxes – a
task I find more odious than cleaning out the shower drain in the
bathroom. I had everything I needed
stored in a big manila envelope, on which I’d written “2017 Tax Info” in large letters
on the front. Seeing I’m self-employed and have an office in my home, I had
quite a collection of receipts, 1099 forms and documents stuffed into the
envelope.
After about two hours of painstakingly filling out
information on my computer tax-program, I decided I’d had enough for one night
and would continue the torture at another time. I hadn’t read my newspapers all week, so I sat down with a cup of
tea and read all of them. Then I took them out to my recycling container in the
garage.
Two nights ago, I finally convinced myself to finish doing
my taxes. My search for the manila envelope that contained all of my tax information, however, turned up nothing. It was
gone. Poof! Vanished into thin air.
That’s when I realized where it HAD to be. When I’d read the
newspapers the night I’d been working on my taxes, I’d stacked them on top of
the manila envelope on my desk. So when I threw out the papers, I’d obviously
picked up the envelope along with them and tossed it out, too.
Panic overcame me as I thought about all of the personal information
in that envelope. I mean, it contained everything but my bra size – and for all
I knew, it might have contained that, too, on one of the receipts that also had
office supplies on it (because I buy my bras and most of my office supplies at
Wal-Mart).
Unfortunately, I’d put out the recycling container for
pick-up nearly a week before, so I knew the envelope was long gone. The
question, however, was where?
So early the next morning, I called the recycling company
and asked what happens to paper in the recycling containers after it’s picked
up. I had visions of my envelope sitting on top of a big pile in a landfill
somewhere, calling out, “Hey! Criminals
looking for a new identity! Come grab
me! I contain the entire life’s history
of the dumb woman who accidentally tossed me out!”
“The paper goes onto a conveyer belt,” the woman at the
recycling company told me. “And then anything that’s trash or not paper is
picked out of it.”
“By human hands or by a machine?” I asked.
“By humans,” she said.
I was hoping she wouldn’t say that.
“Then someone could grab my envelope and keep it, especially
since it says TAX INFO in big letters on the front?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s not at all likely,” she said. “The conveyer belt
is very fast. It wouldn’t be easy for someone to read what it says on the
envelope as it goes zooming by. And, you figure, it also will be mixed in with
a lot of newspapers and other paper.”
“And where does it go after that?” I was afraid to ask. I
silently prayed she would say a giant shredder.
“The paper gets sorted by grades and is then compressed into bales.
Then it goes to companies that turn it into other paper products.” She paused
as if trying to think of some way to make me feel better about my big goof.
“Just think,” she said brightly, “your envelope could end up being something
really nice – like wallpaper!”
I groaned as visions of someone’s wallpaper having my
social-security number plastered all over it ran through my mind. And with my
luck, it would be lining the walls in a prison recreation room.
So I guess all I can do now is wait and see what happens.
I’m just hoping I
won’t receive a bill next month from a hotel in Tahiti where I supposedly spent
two weeks in a luxury suite.
But there might be hope.
After all, about 10 years ago I accidentally tossed my entire checkbook
into the trash and nothing ever happened…at least not yet.
# # #
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