I Might Be A . . . yeah.

I've made no mystery of my love of mail (for those of you snickering, please note the spelling and the lack of an "s" at the end of that word). Be it snail or e, fan or hate, personal or junk, I love mail. Today was a major postal haul at the homestead. It was both glorious and humbling.

The first thing I noticed was that the mailman came to the door. Usually that means one of two things: 1) I'm in trouble, or 2) Awesome! Today it was a little bit of both. He was a carrying a big puffy bag, a handful of would-be normal mail, and the BMG CD I was trying to send back. So let's start with the trouble.

He was very nice about it, in fact, only trying to look out for my best interests, which I greatly appreciate. No beef at all with the mailman. He's great. What he pointed out to me, though, stoked the flames of my ire in a different direction. "When they see that you've taped up the package, sometimes they return it to you and charge you postage because you already opened it," he said kindly, pointing to the packing tape encircling the bottom of the unwanted CD carrier. 

"As far as I know," I replied honestly, "that's how it came to me. So I guess I'll risk it." 

He gave me a wry smile that said silently, "You might want to ask your wife if one of your kids got a hold of this." 

I gave him a nod in an unspoken attempt at saying, "You're right. And the fact that BMG is going out of business isn't going to help my chances of them taking this back, but you know what? It serves them right for making it impossible to cancel your account while making me refuse 2-3 featured selections per month. Good riddance, and I hope you bring down Columbia House with you." I think he understood.

Then I took the mail inside and was filled with glee and horror, intermingled into a kind of, "Eh, could be worse," feeling. The big puffy bag was a big puffy Valvoline stadium blanket and a $7 auto service gift card. And in the mail was an envelope with my official United States Bowling Congress membership card. 

I immediately faced a moment of truth. Do I accept my destiny or inwardly rebel at the circumstances raging out of control around me? There I was at home, hair a mess, in a t-shirt and jeans, with a Valvoline stadium blanket in one hand and a bowling congress membership card in the other, and feeling like Nick Cage in The Family Man. And then I made the only decision that could ever bring me peace.

I'm a redneck. And proud of it.

P. S. I highly recommend doing a Google image search on the term redneck. It's priceless.