Someone Else’s Mail

Someone Else’s Mail

We bought our house in 2000. It was part of one of those California designed communities where you have five styles to choose from. We moved in on May 1, 2001. It’s been great except for one thing, the mail. They’ve been phasing out door to door mail delivery for years so we must walk to our neighborhood mailbox to get ours. Each box has about 40 houses using it so its easy for me to understand how the delivery person (politically correct way to say mailman) can screw up jamming mail into those little boxes. Regularly, we’ll get someone else’s mail.

This time I didn’t notice until I got the mail home. I went through the letters, and bills. There was no problem, so I sat down when I had a quiet moment to leaf through one of the four catalogs that came that day. My wife is always signing up for different catalogues so I didn’t think anything of it. The cover was nice, it had a lady dressed fashionably, there was nothing funny about the name, I just had never heard of the company before. I cracked it open, turned the pages and stopped.

It was full of sex toys, all shapes and sizes, stuff I’d never seen before. I examined the front cover, looked at the address sticker and realized that it wasn’t our address. It was our neighbor’s. I was stunned. I knew this woman, I thought pretty well. She never appeared the type (if there is a type).

Now I don’t consider myself a prude or naïve about the world, and I’m not judging her. That’s not my job. I’ve got enough to think about during the day and now I had more to think about than I wanted to. I just didn’t know what to do with it.

Do I walk to her house, knock on the door and say, “Excuse me but this came to our house by mistake” ? Should I just shove it back into the mailbox or just chuck it?

No matter what, every time I see her from now on I’ll have this knowledge about her that she doesn’t know I have. I looked through the catalogue again and tried to figure out what half of the products were for.

Then my wife walked in.

She wanted to know what I was reading so I smiled and handed her the catalogue. She looked through the first couple of pages and I chuckled as her eyes widened and her face contorted into an expression of surprise and shock. She looked at the address.

She said, “No way!”

I said, “Way.”

She sat down and looked through it.

“I can’t even figure out what half this stuff is for!”

I said, “Honey, we just don’t get out enough.”

The mutual decision was that we chuck it and we did. Later, as we left for a visit to Grandma’s with the kids, we happened to pass the addressee on the way out. She waved, we waved back and my wife and I both smiled knowingly at each other. I thought of the old saying.

Ignorance really is bliss.