I have been under some internal mandate of unknown origin to continue to pare my life down. Stuff. Whew, stuff. Stuff has so much promise in the acquiring and can be so disappointing in the possession. I was digging through some drawers that contained several pounds of paper that I have been hauling around for years - fifty years in some cases - and never rereading. Newspaper and magazine articles about the glory years of the Cincinnati Reds, scorecards from Spring training games when I was deep in my addictions and still getting away with it, a few books and pictures and cards. Memorabilia. I can say with certainty I have not looked at any of this stuff in 30 years and to say it has been 40 years wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. I didn't read all of it this time and I know I wouldn't take it back out anytime soon, so I boxed it all up and took the package to the Post Office to mail to a friend who still follows the team like I did in my teens, aware that there is a lower rate for sending books through the mail. While the package didn't technically contain books it did contain paper with words written on them. What is a book anyway? If I took all of the newspaper clippings and put them into a binder would that be a book? Maybe the Post Office should have a manuscript rate. This is on them, not me. If you buy a lamp you get a twenty page pamphlet tell you, for instance, not to plug the lamp into an electrical outlet and take a shower so it's not too much to ask the Post Office to put some thought into their Book Rate. Spell it out!
I'm an individual who is a slave to logical behavior. I hate things that don't make sense, that aren't logical. I like numbers. One plus one equals two and that's that. There are generally ways to do something that are better than all the other ways to do something and when this is the case - not always but pretty often - I push back when I'm asked to do something the way that isn't the best. To wit: I set the package down on the counter and told the old guy working that it contained "books and papers." This was not true and this means, technically, I lied. It contained papers. I took the concept of a "Book Rate" and modified it somewhat to fit my concept of what could be shipped under the guise of a "book." I didn't want to pay the much higher rate you have to pay to ship other shit and I decided I could change the facts in my favor. A little twisting and bending and jamming and forcing, heating those facts up until they melt a little and can be reconfigured to my liking. The guy looked at the box and said: "If you take the papers out I can give you a much better rate." I looked at the box and pondered a moment, fighting back a low-grade urge to explain how the United States Post Office could do things better. He wanted me to cut the box open, take some stuff out, seal the box back up, mail it, take the papers home and repackage them and then return to the Post Office to mail the papers. I took a beat and then said with a straight face: "OK, it's just books." What the fuck, right? All I was going to do was take the package to another Post Office and tell them "Books - just books" because I'm not stupid, right? And what was the guy going to say: "Sir, you just said it's books and papers." I didn't see it happening. I played the odds. I made the calculation he wasn't going to get into it with me. He just wanted to make it to lunch time so he could eat his baloney and cheese sandwich in the break room, not argue semantics with stone-cold liar sociopath.
The guy processed the order. He wasn't unpleasant but he wasn't chatty, either. I told him one thing and then I told him another and he knew one of them wasn't true so he knew he was dealing with a liar. Not a horrible, evil liar but I didn't come clean with him. You know, I didn't care. His organization was illogical and inefficient and being a slave to the truth was going to inconvenience me. The cost was $8.50 instead of $30.50 so that helped my calculus, too. I was effusive in my praise of his service that morning. I felt/feel no guilt about what happened. Get your shit together, Post Office.
I told this story to SuperK when I got home. I didn't perceive it as being anything that special or out of the ordinary and pretty typical of something I might do or say and she lost it, collapsing with laughter. It surprised me, actually. Like "shit, maybe I am a psychopath."
I told her that she just bought an entire year of bad behavior with her reaction.
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