9/11/06 or how the US Postal service is keeping us safe.

O.K. I know today is 9/12/06 but with the events of yesterday and last week, I had to write about this.

 

            Starting about a week ago, we noticed that we were not getting any mail. At first I thought maybe our mail carrier was sick or maybe our mail was given to the wrong house. But after not getting any for three days, I called the post office. They couldn’t answer my questions but took my name, address, and phone number and said they would get back to us in one to two business days after the supervisor looked into it. We even saw some poor excuse for a mail carrier on Saturday bypassing houses and zigzagging back and forth across the street. Fast forward to 9/11/06, while I’m at work, my wife gets a phone call from the Post Office. They proceed to tell her that our mail is being held because we have a letter with a “Suspicious Powder” leaking from it. They also tell her that she must come down there see the supervisor and identify the powder in order to get our mail delivery resumed. My wife then asks “How am I supposed to identify it?” with the answer “This is procedure”. My wife then calls me and tells me this. I was completely blown away by all this. She asks me how she is supposed to identify it. “Am I some sort of “Powder Expert?” “Do they expect me to lick it?”

            OK people, I mean what ever happen to Homeland Security? Aren’t they responsible for testing Suspicious Powders? Where are all my tax dollars going? I told her she should just go in and say you have no idea and tell them to call the HazMat unit. That would really make things interesting.

            This is time for me to mention the biggest and most burning question of the moment. Who in the heck would be sending us “Suspicious Powder”? I can’t think of anyone who I’ve pissed off recently. I can’t even begin to imagine that I’m that important that someone would want to do us in or get us our very own FBI file.(though secretly I’ve always wanted one, always sounded cool)

            So my wife goes to the Post Office and sees the Supervisor. Before he starts, he says that they thought we were trying to avoid them because we didn't respond. "Respond to what?" my wife asked. We sent 2 people to your house to try to contact you. One of them left a note with your daughter. (this we find out later was my 10 year old) The note they left was actually one of those "We tried to deliver a package but you werent home" slips with a phone number on it. No wonder we didn't get it, you don't leave an important message with a 10 year old! His response to that was "they thought she was 12". He proceeds to show her a letter sealed inside a Hazardous waste bag with big letters reading WARNING.

The letter is from the Lake Tahoe branch. This letter is seems, caused enough of a scare at the Lake Tahoe Post Office that the entire Lake Tahoe Post Office was shut down when it came through! Don't you think that if they shut down a post office they would check out this powder more thoroughly? This letter is addressed to my 15 year old daughter at her summer camp address where she was counseling camp using her camp name. The reason it was our mail being held was due to the fact that the return address was our home address. This is where things get even stupider. He asks my wife if she knows what the powder is and if she knows who sent it. My wife tells him she has no idea who sent it and if she had to guess, she thinks it looks like sand. This doesn’t help the situation. The Supervisor then starts lecturing my wife for 20 minutes! 20 minutes my wife had to sit there and listen to this guy go on about how serious this whole situation is! Especially with the way the world is now, especially after September 11 bla bla bla! The long and short of it came down to if we could figure out who sent it and what it was, we would start getting our mail again. Nobody would get in trouble, the whole affair over. If we couldn’t figure it out, then the letter, powder and all would be sent to the Post Master General for investigation. If this happens, we will not get any mail until the investigation is concluded.

            Now, the only person that we know of that was at Lake Tahoe during the time my daughter was at camp was her boyfriend. HMMMMMMMM.... My wife picked up our daughter from school and told her about all the goings on and asked her if it was him. My daughter called him and asked him if he was the terrorist. Sure enough it was him. In his own romantic way he managed to shut down a United States Post Office, get my mail stopped, and caused my wife to be lectured and threatened with investigation by the Post Master General. Who says love is dead?

            What was the “Suspicious Powder”? You ask.

 

            Sand from Lake Tahoe and Pop Rocks.

I should be getting my mail starting tomorrow.