Fear And Loathing At The Post Office

When I die and I'm flung down to hell, my own personal hell will play the theme song to Sanford and Son on a loop, spliced with the smoothest of the smooth jazz--Sax on the Beach, perhaps? 24 long hours every day I will be forced to watch endless reruns of Three's Company while I wait in line after ever-loving line. Just as I reach the end of one line, a faceless drone with the IQ of my cat will snidely inform me that I am in THE WRONG LINE and I will be booted back into another series of lines where I will wait.

Forever.

The people in front of me will vary. Sometimes, I will have the enormous woman in the halter top who will stop screaming into her cell phone every couple of minutes to shriek at me, "WHATCHU LOOKIN' AT?" Sometimes, I will have a leering older man with a dent in his forehead who will stare creepily at my chest and say things like, "you got a purdy mouth."

Every so often, I'll have to sit on hard plastic chairs, you know, the sort that makes your butt sweat, where I will have small toys thrown at me by small misbehaving children.

This will be my hell. It will look remarkably like the DMV. Or the Post Office.

While I tend to be obnoxiously organized and on time to a fault, the very thought of having to get my driver's license renewed or take a trip to the Post Office is enough to fill me with dread for weeks prior. Rather than rip the old band-aid off and just DO IT already, there's always a cat to be waxed or a house in Paris to be, uh, dusted. Never mind that we don't have a cat or a house in Paris.

There's just something so off-putting about having to do a chore that involves being berated for doing things wrong when I have no idea what to do or why I'm wrong. Don't get me wrong, I like rules. I was nicknamed Super Becky Overachiever for a reason: I am an irritating overachiever and if there's a rule to be followed, I'll not only FOLLOW it, I'll glare at anyone who doesn't!

But then I need to know the rules. I worked as a waitress for close to ten years and I do remember how working with the general public can be exasperating, but I've never thought that it was fair to be rude to someone for not knowing the way things work.

Thankfully, I suppose, I don't have a job* that requires I use either the Post Office or the DMV with any regularity so it's only several times each year that I have to muster up every ounce of my courage to grace their hallowed halls with my obviously irritating presence. And this year, for Christmas, I decided to give myself the gift that keeps on giving.See, I'm going to make my poor husband,The Daver, do the mailing for our family.

After I've built it up like this, I'm pretty sure he's going to come back and smugly say, “What were you TALKING about, Becky? The clerk gave me a Christmas present!”

Which is fine with me. If only I could somehow find a way to have him renew my driver's license for me, it would be a Christmas Miracle.

*job? What job?