What a Card!

Almost everyone in my class in our dormitory thought the Christmas card Nancy had sent to almost everyone in my class in our dormitory was fabulous. I didn't know whether the card was fabulous or not because I was the only one who didn't get one. She said she had sent me one, and I believed her because we were friends.

Yes, friends. The first week of school we both had a labor saving idea. Our rooms were at the end of a long, long corridor, and the bathroom was at the opposite end of that long, long corridor. Juggling washcloths and towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste, combs and brushes, and our breakable water glasses was a job for a couple of teamsters, but we weren't teamsters. Then, we each had a brainstorm, the same brainstorm. We would leave our toothbrushes and toothpaste, our combs and our brushes in our breakable water glasses on one of the shelves above one of the sinks. All we'd have to tote back and forth would be our washcloths and towels. In June when packing to go home for the summer, we made a discovery. Someone, a mystery woman, must have thought that one of the combs, one of the brushes, one of the toothpastes, one of the toothbrushes, and one of the glasses belonged to her. She must have taken them all back to her room. I thought the set left behind was mine. Nancy thought it was hers. For almost a full academic year, we shared the same toothbrush. Imagine that! Perhaps Nancy was traumatized, but I wasn't. We were, after all, friends.

I didn't know we were sharing a toothbrush, but I did believe that my fabulous Christmas card
from Nancy had been lost, destroyed, or sent to someone else with my name. I trusted my friends. Still do.

Another friend, Liz, had a laundry box. Whenever she accumulated enough laundry to fill it, she'd pack it up and send it home. Her mom would send it back, filled with articles of clean clothing as well as articles from newspapers and magazines. One day in late spring, a blurb about Hubert Humphrey caught my eye. To my astonishment, the explanation of what had happened to my own fabulous Christmas card from Nancy was on the back. It seems my letter carrier, my very own letter carrier, had developed a major anxiety attack about delivering the bags and bags of mail he was supposed to deliver during the Christmas Season. Overwhelmed, he had taken all that mail home with him. He had stuffed it under beds, sofas, chairs. He had stuffed it into kitchen cabinets, medicine cabinets. He even filled bathtubs with mail. How much mail? Not simply hundreds of pieces of mail, but thousands and thousands of pieces of mail. The Post Office invited my neighbors and me to sort through the piles, the Mt. McKinley, the Pike's Peak, that our mail had created. If we did, what treasures would we find? I'd find a fabulous Christmas card from Nancy, but what else? A few ads? A few bills? Perhaps a sample toothbrush? I chose to stay at home.