There was a time when postal mail was very important. It still is – don’t get me wrong, but paper-less email by comparison is just wonderful. I think back to mail in India, and my father trundling up the stairs with a few papers in his hand, all mail and all important. No paper advertising, no people trying to sell you stuff, no calls for cheap insurance or stores screaming sales of swimming pool cleaners (and we don’t even have a swimming pool – you’d think that with all this technology somebody would do some research before bombarding us with useless bits of paper). I do like some mail – all the department store adverts are fun to look through, although the husband will trash them when he thinks I’m not looking. So some mail is good, but I don’t want to be absolutely swathed in the stuff. It’s paper, paper and more paper, coming through the door and never finding a way out.
Our mail basket, which is where our mail collects while it’s waiting to be sorted is always overflowing. The problem : the mail comes everyday, but we sort only once a blue moon. So, the mail comes, we look through it cursorily, separate out the critical items and dump the rest into the mail basket.
Dumping more mail into the mail basket , although I mention it so breezily, is actually a pretty complicated procedure. The mail basket, because of it’s ugliness (imagine random, differently sized papers, sticking out in all directions) is placed in a cabinet. It’s actually only about a foot high, but can reach up to double that when fully loaded. Adding paper to that ungainly mountain, is like one of those kid games (I think it’s jenga), where you stack blocks one on top of the other and the person who causes the pile to collapse loses.
To mask ugliness, and pretend we don’t have to sort it (and of course because we are cleanliness freaks in general), we simply close the doors to the cabinet. If you open the cabinet, and the mail spills out, you lose – you’re the one who’ll have to sort out the mess. It’s like that once you have kids, you find a problem – you fix it. Equality, sharing, and all that good stuff goes straight out the window.
As the days go by, and the volume in the mail basket grows, with every load you dump on it, the whole contraption threatens to overflow onto the floor, and cover all walk-able areas. The trick then, to avoid being the mail-sorter by default (and I abhor the task – it’s a little worse than changing a dirty diaper) is to place the new mail installment on the top as gingerly as possible, and shut the cabinet door quickly, before it un-balances. Ideally should take not more than a second, else you run the risk of the whole thing collapsing all over your person. Then you walk away as though you have other important things to do, and you didn’t hear the mail slithering all over the cabinet. Also you must be careful to do this when the husband is not hanging around, because with his sharp ears, he WILL hear the mail collapse and point out to you that it is now your turn to be mail sorter, because he’s done it the past 10 times and blah-blah-blah .
And since we actually pretend to be responsible, work-seeking individuals who wish to toil and clean every second of the day , instead of lazy, TV watching slobs who want bed-tea, I will succumb and will sort. Which is a fate I would not wish on anyone. Except the husband. I mean, someone’s got to do the dirty work, so why not him ?
I’m sure he’s thinking the same.
Categories : _misc
