Friday, December 14, 2007

whose mailbox is it, anyway?

Speaking of snow. We have this weird thing on my street wherein the mailboxes for all the houses are down at the bottom of the hill, i.e. almost in front of my house. This makes no sense to me, since it is not a condo complex of any sort, but apparently, postal regulations are such that if your street didn't exist prior to 1980-something, they don't need to deliver to each house individually. Who knew?

And I was just saying to someone today that I was shocked when my next door neighbor cleaned off and around the mailboxes yesterday, because 95% of all snowstorms, someone from my house does it. (The other 5% of the time, the people who did it yesterday do it.) And I realized that I'm always sort of very vaguely resentful of that. That mailbox "belongs" to everyone on the street, and yet the people up the hill or across the street never ever think to come clean it when they're out shoveling/plowing. And yet they would be oh-so-sad if the mailbox didn't get cleaned off and thus the mailman did not deliver.

Now, seriously, this is a very small peeve. I'm not filled with burning hatred towards my neighbors because of it. But it makes me think about all those things other people take care of for us that we perhaps don't even notice, or take for granted if we do. I think I'm going to figure out one of those things in my own life and make sure I thank the person who's been doing it.

xoxo

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