Postal Blues

The man who works at my local post office has a reputation for being a little on the surly side. I’ll admit he’s not the most outgoing man in the world, but neither does he seem to be one of the “disgruntled postal workers” I’ve heard about. Yesterday I drove there to mail a package. He asked if the contents were anything corrosive or explosive, something like that. I reassured him and said it was a present our ten-year old grandson had bought his sister for Christmas and it hadn’t arrived when everyone was still at our house. I also needed to buy stamps. I like interesting ones and am disappointed if I have to settle for the plain books of stamps available at grocery stores. There was a display of the different ones for sale at the post office and, as I was the only customer in the place, I could spend a little time deciding which I wanted. I chose the ones called “Message Monsters”, with little hand-drawn wonderfully non-scary monsters on them . When the man pulled them out of his secret stamp drawer, he showed me the extra things that were on perforated lines along the edges and could be used to further decorate the monsters.  “Look,” he said, his eyes shining. “You can put different hats on them or add little messages. All sorts of things.” Just then another customer came in and the postmaster abruptly straightened up and told me the cost. I walked out the door smiling. For just a minute, I’d seen an imaginative child where a serious postman had been.

Image courtesy of pasja1000 at Pixabay.com