Mail Phobia
(And my apology to
Postmistresses)
by M.K. French
I have a strange fear
of the mail. Though I have researched this thoroughly on the Internet, I cannot
seem to find a name for this irrational psychosis amid all the other crazy
phobias. It’s maddening. There’s a name for the fear of bright colors
(chromophobia), the fear of butterflies (Lepidopterophobia), and even the fear of chewing gum
(Chiclephobia), but none for what I have. (If you would like to read about
these “absurd phobias and the people who have them,” see the link at the bottom
of this post.)
I did find one
comforting site (see other link) in which someone else actually
discusses their fear of the mail, and a therapist’s advice to that person,
which means at least I’m not the only one. The biggest difference is that this
anonymous person doesn’t seem to know what’s causing it, and I have at least
one story (following) through which I can trace at least one experience which
contributed to my phobia.
Because of this
bizarre fear, postmistresses hate me. I say mistress and not master, because
even though it might be more “p-c” to say master for both (I once received an
ass chewing from a female actor for calling her an actress. She scolded, “you [meaning
I] wouldn’t call you a teacheress, would you/I?”) To which I responded that she
could if she wanted to). All of the postmasters
in the small towns I've lived in for the majority of my life have been women.
Usually fastidious (a quality probably very necessary in their profession),
with zero tolerance for irresponsible flakes like me who don't check their P.O.
box for weeks on end, leaving the mail to pile up, until it’s jammed and
crammed into every available pocket of space in that damned box, so tight I
have a hard time getting it out even if I want to (guess it serves me right),
and then overflowing into some rubber-banded pile that they've started in the
back for me. Finally, I get up the courage to face their disapproving faces,
enduring the self-inflicted turmoil of having to be gracious during repeated
reminders of their magnanimity towards me for bending the rules and keeping it
longer than they were supposed to, saying, “you know we're supposed to send it
back after so many days.” And I try to smile a grateful smile while when they
hand me my accumulated pile of anxiety, name in all caps, accusatory black
letters.
And that gets me
wondering. Why was that decided way back when? To use LETTERS. In this digital age, it’s considered shouting if you use
all caps. SEE? DOESN'T IT FEEL LIKE I'M SHOUTING AT YOU? Or maybe your eye even
came here, to this point, first thing instead if at the beginning of the
story—just like the mail, shouting your
full name, just like all those times long ago when you heard it at the opposite
end of the house, MARY-KATE FRANCES!, and you knew you were going to get your
ass tanned, except it's so much more...its PAY THIS BILL AT ONCE, FIRST MIDDLE
LAST NAME!!!!! (If you did indeed start here instead of at the beginning, GO
BACK AND READ FROM THE BEGINNING, FIRST MIDDLE LAST NAME!) I mean, please, if
you would be so kind as to go back to the beginning and start there.
I kept thinking it was
those damned capital letters that caused my mail phobia, but that's a lousy excuse to
offer to the poor post mistresses, when you go to face the music, who you
really do feel guilty about, for being such a pain in their collective asses. (I’m
sorry ma’am, but it’s the letters….they scare me! Not the letters, the LETTERS. See how ridiculous that
sounds?) Yes, I really did think it was the LETTERS. Until one day in a weird flashback, when I remembered why
I hate the mail. I humbly offer my apologies to
you, dear rural mistresses of post...I only have this excuse to offer you. And
though it's a bit late, please indulge me while I offer an explanation as to
why I’m really not trying to be a pain in your asses, just trying to work out
my mail phobia:
When
I was a kid, I used to love getting the mail (didn’t everyone?). Especially
junk mail. There were always big slick colorful printed advertisements. Sometimes
they had stickers in them. Sometimes they had neat pictures to look at. Sometimes
there was a Highlights magazine. Sometimes
they made “promises” that caused shattered illusions and painful realizations
for a kid, just-at-that-age, feeling helpless to do anything for her distressed
single mother.
We
had just completed the post-school, P.O. Box check of our bi-weekly routine. My
mom always took a few moments in front of the post office to sort the mail in
our midnight blue Maverick, a car which I thought was hideous for some reason. I
cursed it for its lack of reverse. At some point, the transmission had acted up
and she couldn’t afford to fix it. Mom still drove it, she just became an
expert at parking it only in places where she wouldn’t be required to go
backwards. Every once in awhile, some jackass would park in front of her (she
would cuss them out and call them jackass, even though, at first, they
obviously had no way of knowing that we didn’t have reverse, though this came
to be an embarrassingly well-known fact in our small town). She always shuffled
the junk over to me, knowing my innocent aesthetic attraction to all the
commercial propaganda. On this particular occasion, it was one of the rare
times that my brother, two years my senior, had either allowed (or been ordered
to allow) me to ride shotgun, making riding in the embarrassmentmobile mildly
tolerable. The first time I saw Karate Kid, (which would have been right around
this time) specifically the scene where Ralph Macchio has to get out and help
push his mother’s car when he’s on his date with the object of his affection, I
could so feel his pain. I was far too
young to date, and young enough to be unable to separate Ralph Macchio from his
character, but I knew that if we ever met in person, we would be perfect for
each other simply based on this singular shared humiliation. I would love to
have that car now.
As we
made our way up the hill towards home, I did my own sorting, looking first for
any treasured magazines. I didn't realize what a luxury they were at the time.
As I reflect on this, I feel yet another appreciation for my mother for making
such little expenditures for my benefit, even though, as you’ll soon see, she
really maybe couldn't afford them. We didn't have reverse in our car, for
Christ’s sake! There were no magazines, no stickers this time. But something
else caught my eye. Through cellophane, it was the LETTERS. They said, MY MOTHER’S NAME, YOU HAVE ALREADY
WON ONE OF THREE FANTASTIC PRIZES!
We
pulled up in front of our house. I greedily tore into the envelope. It was
understood that any mail that had been given to me was destined for the
garbage, and therefore I was allowed to open it. My excitement built as I
scanned the cardstock’s pictures and accompanying letter. How could my mother
have overlooked this? No matter. I would get to be the bearer of this grand
news. As my eyes jumped around from a colorful picture of a sports car (I bet
it even has reverse!), to the silhouette of palm trees against a tropical sunset,
to a pile of golden coins, I took no notice of mom’s first opening until I
heard her gasp.
I
reluctantly turned from my own happy task to see her furrowed brows, her look
of worry, her trembling hands holding the contents of one of those ominous envelopes
with the zig-zagging blue lines, a security envelope. I had seen these
envelopes before, usually as she sat at the table paying bills. I knew they
were from the bank. She always kind of looked unhappy when she opened these
envelopes, but I couldn’t comprehend why she had chosen to open this one while
still sitting in the car outside our house.
I
turned back to my own reading. My momma was going to be able to pick one of
these three prizes! My days of riding in the embarassmentmobile were over!
Knowing how hard she worked, all those long hours grading papers in her
classroom, planning lessons. I knew she could probably use a real vacation. I
momentarily thought I would unselfishly recommend the vacation. But just as
quickly my own selfishness prevailed. I would do my best to convince her to
choose the car. I hopped out of the Maverick and ran to my brother, who was
already in the yard throwing a baseball against our pitching net.
“Look,
Bobby! Look what mom won!”
He
stopped throwing the baseball, took the envelope from me and glanced over it.
“She didn’t win anything, stupid. They send those to everyone. They’re just
trying to get us to buy stuff.”
“But—“
“Throw
it in the garbage.” He threw it back at me.
My
brother was obviously the stupid one. Why
would they send something in the mail that was a lie? I ignored him and his
blasé attitude and ran back to the open window of the car, where my mother was
still sitting with the zig-zaggy envelope letter. If it’s possible to have two
expressions, she now looked both worried and shocked.
“Mom!
Look, you won a prize! You can get a new car!”
She
ignored me, still staring at the letter, now digging in her purse for
something.
“Mom!”
I insisted, brandishing the letter.
She
found what she must have been looking for, her checkbook. She pulled it out and
began looking at the place where she always wrote down numbers after she wrote
a check. The ledger, as I would later
be instructed. She held it against the steering wheel with one hand, the
zig-zaggy letter in the other.
“Mom!”
I now began thrusting my letter through the open window at her. “You won a
prize!”
“Mary,
be quiet. I’m trying to figure something out.”
“But
Mom!” I opened up the door and got back
in the car. I didn’t understand why I was the only one who could see what a
treasure I was holding in my hand. I was not going to let this piece of news go
unnoticed and uncelebrated. I tried to wait patiently for mother to be finished.
I sat mute, kicking the dashboard.
My
elation turned to confusion as I heard my mother sob, cross her forearms over
one another on the steering wheel, and lay her head down. I put my hand on her
back, trying to be of comfort, knowing that whatever was wrong, it would be
remedied by my discovery.
“What’s
wrong, mom?” I asked.
She
picked her head back up and shoved the villainous piece of mail into her purse
with her checkbook. She looked up, staring through tears at nothing on the
horizon.
“Mom?”
I questioned.
“I
overdrew my account.” She said after a pause.
“Overdrew?”
“I
made a mistake.” She seemed angry now. “A big one. I accidentally spent more
money than we have.”
“It’s
okay, mom, everybody makes mistakes,” I soothed, echoing one of her own
generous aphorisms. The mechanics of a checking account were a complete mystery
to me. Some might argue that they still are.
“This
was a bad mistake, Mary. A four-hundred-dollar-mistake. My ledger was wrong.”
She tried to explain. I was unfamiliar with money as an abstraction. I did not
yet grasp how you could spend more money than you had, and so, failed to see
the urgency of the situation.
“How
could I have done that? What am I going to do?” I erroneously thought she was
talking to me, even though she was still looking off into the distance.
“Mom,
look. It doesn’t matter.” I again offered my piece of mail. My dream of a new
car might be already over, but I knew that the promised shiny pile of coins
would fix everything for her, and seeing her that upset made me forget about
the car.
“Mary,
go in the house and start your chores.” She said sternly.
I got
out of the car, and slammed the door in frustration. Slamming the door was a
no-no, but I wanted her to know exactly how frustrated I was that she was not
seeing my solution to what she took all on her shoulders as her own problem,
but what I was willing to share, in my own little eight-year-old bravery, as
our problem.
“But Mo-omm!
We won some money! LOOK!”
“Mary,
go in the house and do what I asked!” she yelled.
Now I
was angry. “Mom, why won’t you lis—“
In a
violent, hysterical burst of energy, she began to shake her permed head from
side to side. She grasped at her ears and then beat her fists against the
steering wheel repeatedly, crying, “Just leave me alone! Leave me alone!”
I
stood on the sidewalk, stunned. I felt my own hot tears rolling down my cheeks
as I clenched false promises in my hand.
She
grabbed at the ignition, the engine turned over. She drove off in the only
direction that she could, forward.
As
the dust settled behind her on the gravel of Alpha Street
My
brother stopped what he was doing, and surprisingly, without the usual insult
or condescension, silently turned me and ushered me up the wooden steps and
into our house. He began a pot of some kind of tasteless and forgettable soup
on the hot plate. Though I didn’t feel like eating, I knew better than to
reject this uncommon gesture of care. I ate the soup, which I salted with the
burning drops rolling down from my eyes and into my mouth, vacillating between
a fearful and pouting state.
It
seemed like forever, but it was probably only about an hour or so before my mother
returned. I had left the letter on the table next to my plate, still foolishly
hoping it might rescue us from this predicament.
I
said nothing as she entered, now composed but pensive. I expected both an
explanation and an apology and got neither. It was only eight o’clock, but I
saw her readying herself for bed. My brother instructed me to finish my
homework and do the same. It was one of the few times I ever did as he told me.
I was angry that he somehow knew what was going on and I didn’t.
As I lay
in bed, my anxiety grew. My precocious knowledge of Charles Dickens and the debtor’s
prisons of England
The
next day, we spoke nothing of the awful letter, or the other one. I continued
to go to school and do my homework and chores for about a week without being
asked, awaiting some unknown terrible fate that never came. I do not know how
my mother resolved the issue, although I expect it was through her ingenious
ability to “rob Peter to pay Paul,” as she called it.
A few
years later, my mom was able to replace the blue Maverick with a little white Toyota
Sometimes
you can pinpoint the specific moments when you learn the really profound things
that you learn; sometimes they’re layered on you through “wisdom of
experience.” Obviously, I eventually came
to understand that just because something is proclaimed in bold capital
letters, or in any other manner, doesn't necessarily make it so. You find out
that some letters are lies, whether printed on an envelope or strung together
in words and spoken. Some bring bad news, but some bring good. I think we all
still kind of hope for things that are too good to be true. That’s the trick, isn't it? Balancing unbridled hope with necessary caution, and learning from
our mistakes.
To
this day, I still hate getting the mail (but I also still kind of hope for a sports
car).
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