Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Saturday, Jan. 01, 2005 - 4:27 a.m.

I oftentimes find I have Sunnflower's "voice" in my head. The "What I Learned" part, anyway.

So, I went to the post office to mail some jewelry today, and the postman guy was totally helpful and nice when one of my boxes proved to be problematic. Usually the employees in my post office are snarky or downright nasty, so I really appreciated all his help and patience. So as I was gathering my change and other stuff up and preparing to leave the counter, I said to him, "Thanks; you're the bomb."

Do not do this.

Said utterance was met by an abrupt stillness one generally only encounters in film, a pause which was probably only about 3 seconds in duration, but which felt a lot more like oh, I don't know, eternity. Not only the guy right in front of me, who had helped me, but the guy to his right AND the guy to his left went into this Tharnlike suspension of time and motion wherein I was the center of their entire universe - and not in a good way, judging from the looks on their faces. The guy to the left of the guy to my guy's left (2 guys down on my right), however, did not freeze. No, he leaned back to look around the guy between me and him in a way one also generally only sees in movies, and usually the funny ones, but in a distinctly unfunny fashion, which tipped off the guy he was helping, who turned to see what all the fuss was and looked at me, which the customer between me and him *and* the one to my left had already done when their respective postal helpers freaked, and ALL of them stared at me, the postmen in utter "WHAT-did-you-say" fashion, so I reacted by standing there gazing back at all of them rather dumbly, wondering why they were looking at me like that. I looked back at the guy in front of me, and he literally choked out "What did you say?"

Everyone was suspended. Everyone. It was sort of like an EF Hutton commercial. Which was a little unnerving, frankly. So I sort of meekly and quietly said back to the guy, "You-you're the bomb?"

At which point everyone sort of sagged and he said (fairly loudly; I guess relief does that to a person), "Oh, I thought you said 'you have the bomb'." Which of course got the attention of every single person in the lobby, and that was no small number of people. And then all of whom then looked at me like "dork; you're how old and you just told the postman he's the bomb?"

I swear, there were eye rolls. I know there were.

The other postmen went back to what they were doing and I apologized all embarrassed for not thinking, finished picking up my stuff and got the hell outta there. I mean, what else can you do? But take a tip from your Aunt Katie, will ya? Don't tell the postman he's the bomb.

Ever.

And have a Happy New Year.

Peace out,
Katie

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