Story 173: Return to Sender

            Every day, she received mail that was addressed to previous tenants.  Usually they were circulars or random offers, so on the ones that did not include the phrase “Or Current Resident,” she entered her own phrase “Return to Sender” and put the postal service to double work.

            The past-due bill concerned her: didn’t the former tenants have their mail forwarded?  Oh well, not her problem, “Return to Sender.”

            Three months after she had moved in and the mail not addressed to her still was being delivered steadily.  She knew the mail carriers were obligated to deliver as addressed, but she wondered if they thought she was running a frat house before receiving her response, “Return to Sender.”

            She was surprised one evening when there was a knock at her door; that just didn’t happen in her building.  She peeped through the peephole and saw a woman standing in the hallway: she searched her memory and recalled seeing this person once, in the distance, climbing the main staircase.  She opened the door to this neighbor, keeping her carving knife out-of-sight on standby.

            The neighbor’s arms were full of mail.

            “Hi,” the neighbor said, “we’ve never met before today, and we’ll probably never speak to each other again after this, but I saw these letters were piled on top of your bursting mailbox and I couldn’t just leave them like that.”  The neighbor passed the letters into her arms; the latter kept staring at the former.  “You might want to get in touch with some of these guys so they’ll stop sending you stuff – I’ve never seen it this bad in my life.  Good luck with that!”  And the neighbor disappeared from her world forever.

            She continued staring as she held the falling mail.  She seems nice, she thought, then returned to the kitchen to inflict writer’s cramp on herself, “Return to Sender.”

           The next night, a thump sounded against her front door.  She peeped and saw no one, so she opened the door to see a package had been left behind.  The label listed her address but a different, although familiar, name: she looked up in time to see the delivery truck screeching off into the night.

            She called the number of the company listed on the label but they were closed.

           As is often the case in life, she found herself in an unsought-after moral dilemma: normally she would never open someone else’s package, but this one had an extra label of “Live Specimens – Open Immediately Upon Receipt!!!!”  The dilemma had the added layer of her not wanting to deal with live specimens.

            She opened the box so as to be responsible for the lesser charge of mail fraud over the greater one of negligent homicide.  As she did so, the landline that she had never replaced rang.

            “Hi, is this the new tenant?”  The voice asked.

            “Who wants to know?”  She hedged.

            “I’m the previous tenant – listen, I made a mistake the other day and had a box sent there, did it arrive yet?”

            “It sure did, and I don’t think I can ‘Return to Sender’ it.”

            “That’s all right, you can leave it outside and I’ll come pick it up right now.  You didn’t open it or anything, right?”

            “Uhhhhhh….”

            “It’s extremely important for your own safety and for all of humanity that the contents of that box stay in that box.  Please tell me you didn’t open it!”

            “It said ‘Open Immediately!’  They were alive, I couldn’t leave them to their fate!”
            “Oh no, where are they?!”

            “Right here – ” she looked in the box and saw it was empty.  She then saw that the curtains at the open living room window had rustled, even though the air was still.  “Actually, I think they’re on the loose.”

            “Oh no!  We’re all doomed!”

            “Well don’t go looking to blame me because you can’t remember where you live.  What are those things, anyway?”

            “They’re everyone’s problems now.  I’ll be around soon to try to track them down – keep your windows and doors closed and don’t go outside for at least the next two hours.  Thanks anyway.”  The call disconnected.

            Oh well, she thought as she broke down the box for recycling.  Whatever happens to the world because of those things, she probably still will be receiving that guy’s mail until the bitter end.

Story 172: Cleaning the Self-Cleaning Oven

            “Hon?”

            “Yes, my love?”

            “Don’t be sarcastic – when was the last time you cleaned the oven?”

            “…I thought it cleaned itself.”

            “You do know that you actually have to press the buttons that tell it to clean itself, don’t you?”

            “Well yeah, sure, everyone knows that.”

            “So when was the last time you did that?”

            “Did…?”

            “Take a look in there, would you?”

            “Sure.  Oh.  Oh wow.  That’s pretty gross.  What did you put in there?”

            “Food!  And so did you!  And you’re the one who said you’d clean it!”

          “That’s when I thought it cleaned itself automatically and I didn’t have to do anything.  Modern technology really lets you down in a lot of insidious and subtle ways, I’ve noticed.”

            “Right – here’s a sponge, here’s soap, here’s water, now get to it!”

            “Argh, why can’t we just turn on the self-cleaning now?  Isn’t this all that thing’s job?”

            “Here’s the instruction book: be my guest.”

            “Hm.  Oh look, we only would need to stop the cleaning cycle if a lot of smoke starts coming out from all the cruddy food left behind.  I say, skip doing this machine’s work and go for it!”

            “Do whatever you want.”

            “Wow, the cycle takes over four hours.  Glad the game’s on today.”

            “What’s that smell?!”

            “Oh don’t worry, the instructions say that’s normal.  I left the window open too, so we don’t suffocate on the carbon monoxide.”

            “OK, what’s that noise?”

            “Apparently, physics is causing the metal to expand and contract with the massive amounts of heat floating around in there.  I honestly don’t even hear it anymore.”

            “All right, there’s smoke coming out, I’m shutting it off!”

            “No!  It’s got another two and a half hours to go and the instructions say the smoke is fine!”

            “They did not, they said to stop if there’s smoke!”

            “The exact words were ‘excessive smoke’ – this is just wimp smoke, I can barely – cough – see it – cough cough cough.”

            “There are flames in there!”

            “THE FLAMES MEAN IT’S WORKING!”

            Five years later....

            “And that, kids, is the reason why there was a gaping hole in the kitchen wall for so long and why you should always clean up your messes right away.”

            “But these are just our toys – ”

            “You heard me.”

Story 171: Don’t Be Upset; Be Amused

            “I’m tired of letting everything get to me!”  Sheila randomly said to her friend at lunch.  “Nothing matters in the end, and I’m sick of being upset all the time by things I can’t change!”

            “Then don’t be,” her friend answered as he sipped his soda and continued to read his newspaper.  “All emotions are choices: no one goes into your mind and makes you feel anything.”

            “That’s – ” she started to argue, then the figurative light bulb went off above her head, “absolutely GENIUS!  All I have to do is choose to be happy all the time, and nothing will go wrong ever again!”

            “I didn’t say that – ” he started.

            “You’re the best – bye!”  She skipped out of the break room and resumed her duties at the Returns Counter.

            Twenty minutes later…

            “Every time I return something here, you always make life difficult; what do you mean, you can’t take it back because it’s been used?  I told you already: we used it, it’s not what we want anymore, now I want my money back!  It’s that simple; do you really need me to show you how to do your job here, sweetheart?”  The customer finally stopped, waiting for an answer.

            Sheila stared at him.  “You – are – HILARIOUS!”

            “Wha…?”

        “I never noticed until now that every time you come here provides me with unending amusement!  It’s an absolute joy to hear what you’ll come up with next!  Go ahead, give me another one.”  She propped her elbows on the counter and leaned her chin on her hands, waiting expectantly.

            “You sassin’ me?”

            Sheila dissolved into hysterics.  “‘Sassin’!’  I love it!”  Her manager removed her from the Returns Counter for the rest of her shift.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

            At a holiday dinner with extended family, Sheila was asked the question she always was asked at those events:

            “Sheila, babe,” her distant cousin said, “when you getting married, huh?  Pretty girl like you, it’s not right – you ain’t getting any younger, you know.”

            “AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”  Sheila’s laughter struck fear into the heart of her distant cousin and all who were present.  She wiped tears from her eyes, then burst into gales of laughter again.

            Her distant cousin awkwardly laughed in reaction: “What, what did I say?”

            “‘Married!’”  Sheila hooted.  “‘Pretty!’  ‘Younger!’  You’re killing me!”

            “What, I’m just saying, the ol’ clock is ticking – ”

            “‘Clock!’”  Sheila buried her face in a dishtowel and howled with laughter into it.  She then raised her head and looked at her distant cousin.  “OK, I’m good now.”  She began howling into the towel again; her distant cousin patted her on the shoulder and moved on.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

            In traffic, a car cut off Sheila just as they both were stopping at a red light.  The other driver checked his rear view mirror to confirm that she was flipping him off, and was a bit disturbed to see her laughing and banging the steering wheel with joy.  The other driver had the sensation that he somehow had become the butt of someone else’s joke, and his world became a strange and unfamiliar place.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

          “So, how did your experiment go?”  Sheila’s friend asked when they were next on break together.

            “Experiment?”

            “You know, where you’d choose to be happy and everything would be all right from then on.”

            “Oh, that – amazingly well,” she said.  “I haven’t been upset in days, not once.”

            “You did hear this morning that we’re not getting raises until who knows when, right?”

           “Yeah, that just made realize that I really should get started on that freelance graphic design business that I always keep talking about and never getting around to doing.  Plus I found it amusing that our salaries are getting frozen while the CEO is this close to indictment.  He’s only hurting himself with a move like that; what a character!”

            “Can you share with me whatever you did to your mind?  I want some.”

            “You’re the one who suggested it in the first place!”

            “I was trying to stop your complaining.”

          “And thanks to you, instead of finding the cloud in every silver lining, I now find the pure hilariousness in every single thing.  I never realized before that the world is completely filled with comedians!”