As I sift through my assortment of letters, cursing the prevalence of junk mail, I recall a time not so very long ago when a person’s worth as a human being was measured by the quantity of mail she received.
I was in college then and I was green and grateful. It was a simpler time. A time when a fat Discover card offer would have made my heart sing. We received our mailbox assignments with trembling excitement during our first day of freshmen orientation. Never could we imagine the hell and heartbreak those mailboxes would cause us.
The tiny post office was in the same building as the cafeteria, which conveniently allowed us to torment ourselves twice per mealtime. Nobody was strong enough to walk by the neat rows of mailboxes without pressing her nose to one and peering hopefully into the window.
There was never any mail.
On this particular afternoon, it was my forehead becoming imprinted with a backwards 3E as I searched hungrily for the edge of a letter bisecting my box.
“You know you never get any mail,” my roommate reminded me.
“That’s because the mail lady is hoarding it for the book she’s secretly composing about my life,” I replied undeterred. I squinted hard. I was almost certain I saw something. It was small and crumpled, like a discarded dessert wrapper. Had someone put garbage in my mailbox? Annoyed, I twisted the knobs to my combination and thrust my hand into the narrow slot. Settling back down onto the balls of my feet I
smoothed out the bit of gold-colored refuse and gasped.
“It’s a package slip,” my roommate whispered in awe.
A package slip. I had heard of such things, but never had I seen one. In fact, all I knew of package slips came from second-hand information that was slightly less credible than urban legends. And yet, there one was in my own two hands. Only Charlie Bucket and I could ever know the sheer ecstasy of staring at a priceless bit of gold paper.
With a chorus of angels singing in my ears, I turned to the window. “I have a package,” I told the postal worker as if in a trance. She raised an eyebrow and went to look for it.
In the eternity that the mail woman was gone, other students began to line up behind me. They sighed audibly. They leaned against the wall. They tapped their feet and cleared their throats. They glared at the back of my head. “All I need is stamps,” one complained. “What’s the hold up?”
“She has a package,” my roommate informed the malcontents, barely concealing a smug smile. I raised my golden package slip above my head. The students averted their eyes from its glory and dropped to their knees, idolaters all.
“We . . . we didn’t know,” one whispered apologetically.
The scene understandably drew attention. More and more of the student population came to witness. And I, the chosen one, spoke words of comfort to them as they waited in the tremendously long post office line. Every once in awhile I’d flash the golden package slip again to send shivers of wonder through the crowd. They began to murmur about what gift the winged messenger of the United Parcel Service had brought unto me.
Students wept, they clung to my legs, a few fainted. The experience was overwhelming. An athlete on crutches hobbled towards the window, appealing to me. I was just about to attempt my first miracle when I felt someone behind me tap my shoulder. The mail lady, looking considerably irritated said, “There’s no package back there.”
“Are you certain?” I asked. “No stone tablets or anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. It must have been a mistake.” And with undue coarseness, she plucked the package slip from my fingers.
As quickly as my followers grew to love me, they turned on me. Angrily they pushed me away from the mailboxes and within moments forgot my meager existence altogether. But I didn’t forget. And I’ll never forget the afternoon I became the messiah. All by the power of a fraudulent package slip.
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