Bret Goes Postal in the Post Office

It's the weekend before Christmas, and in the spirit of the holiday, our house church has put together a care package for some former members who have moved away. I was tasked with the job of packaging these items and taking them to the post office. I was fully aware this morning that the post office would look like a New York subway car during rush hour, but I was not prepared for what I encountered.

When I got to the post office, there were approximately 20 people in line at the main counter. Luckily, our post office has one of these new self-service machines (which I dearly love), and there were only 2 people (!) in that line. (People here in the heartland still fear computers enough to keep them away from such a machine. It might give you "the radiation.") In any case, the choice to enter this line seemed obvious. But as I approached, I began to understand the error of my ways.

You see, there was a gentleman with an approximately 5 year old daughter using the machine. He had 4 packages piled up next to him, and when I arrived, I heard the sound of his daughter attempting to read the screen in front of him.

"Does...your.....package contain...any.....flameables....or...live stock...or"

Now imagine that there are 30 lines of text on this particular screen, and she's on the first one. Reading......very.......slowly. Then at the end of the screen dad says:

"Honey, which button should daddy push?"

"No?"

"That's right...push no."

And then we wait 10 seconds for the poor little parent-less child to find that button on the screen and push it. On to screen 2 of 10.

I about lost my mind. I muttered to myself, "This is unbelieveable," to which the lady in front of me returned an approving smirk. About that time another couple came in and entered the line behind me. The lady says "oooooh...This line is short. This will be quick." I turned to her and in a voice loud enough that everyone heard me said, "Don't count on it." I was ignored, as expected, by the gentleman monopolizing the machine.

About this time the machine asked for his credit card. He starts fumbling around in his wallet and says "Honey, go ask your momma for a credit card." Momma was out in the van. Oh man...Smoke is coming out the ears. All Christmas spirit has abandoned me, and all I wanted to do was go at it with this guy. I'm holding packages lovingly created by my house church, but if there had been anything with any weight in those packages, I might have opened them. I'm a pretty even keeled guy, and I have a long fuse, but I'm not sure I've ever been closer to losing it than I was in this instance. Every part of me considered saying something directly to the guy about the decision-making process behind his actions when there are 50 PEOPLE IN THE POST OFFICE THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Ok, I feel better now. A little eggnog, a dozen cookies, and I'll be as happy as Frosty the freaking Snowman.

Merry Christmas.
Bret