Superhero Mail
I just received a notice from the US Postal Service that Spiderman will be delivering the mail from now on. No, I’m not joshing you. But if you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself on the website at USPS.com. Spidey is right there on the home page, big as life. And it appears the USPS has a new motto too: “Speed, agility and reliability.” If this leaves you speechless, you’re not alone. Now I’m gonna come right out and say it, I’m kind of old fashioned. Yes, it’s true. I liked the old motto: “Neither rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” You don’t remember that motto either, do you? Gloom of night? Maybe gloom was a problem back in the old days when it was darker than it is now. Or not. But agility was certainly not part of the equation back then. This “new look” brought by star-power is such a drastic change
from the regimented postal service I remember from my childhood – back when Postmaster Junior Hainsey asked me if there was a letter inside the package I was sending to my big brother in college. Well heck, when you’re sending someone a dried up dead bat, you had better send a note of explanation, and of course this note led to my being charged an extra 5 cents postage for the letter inside, besides the cost of the packaged bat. Postmaster Hainsey was a by-the-book guy. I didn’t bother telling him there was a dead bat in the package. I’m sure there was some regulation against that – or at the very least a “dehydration” surcharge. But now it seems we have a fun-loving, looser brand of postal service. They’d have to be fun for Spiderman to want to work for them. He doesn’t hang out with old fuddy-duddys. There’s always something moving and shaking when Spidey is around. I’ll admit, I was a little concerned that maybe the USPS website had been hacked and the Spiderman thing was all a big joke. But surprisingly, that’s not the case. The postal service really has gone Holly-weird. And further, as it turns out, this isn’t the first time the motto has been updated. It has been reworded several times over the years, to keep up with the times. At one point, I could swear the motto was: “Neither rain nor sleet nor snow will impede the delivery of packaged dead bats.” But this was purely an urban legend. There has never been sleet when the mail is being delivered. Back to Spiderman – apparently he is not as busy fighting crime as one might imagine. Because here he is, taking on a day job delivering mail for the common folk. He just finished starring in a movie, and instead of taking a well-deserved vacation, he’s looking for something to chase away the boredom. I, for one, would like the postal service to consider hiring other superheroes when they’re not busy, so they can deliver mail to my door, among them Captain America, Thor, and by golly, ask Batman too. As thousands of mail carriers around the country can attest, delivering the mail will not only alleviate boredom, but will also result in multiple Chihuahua bite wounds on the ankles. Yes, mail delivery would keep even a superhero plenty busy. There are billions of letters, plus car tires, heads of cauliflower, chirping boxes of baby chicks, motorcycle engines, crocodile skulls, and, of course, your miscellaneous dried up dead bats.
