"I never seen a place with a walk-in mailbox."
I imagine that for the average parent, retrieving the mail is no big deal. You open the front door, take two steps to the mailbox, open it up, pick up your credit card offers (or threatening letters from your credit card companies, depending on your credit), and walk back inside to discover what your child broke during your 5-second absence. In our home, claiming the mail is an adventure fit for the whole family, like going to the state fair without the odor.
Our mailbox is located far away from our house. I’d estimate the distance to be about 100 yards from our front door; that’s the equivalent of just under nine football fields. We have one centrally located mail receptacle with slots for all 31 units in our complex, similar to the system used by many apartments, dormitories, and prisons. A locked door individually seals each slot, ensuring that that amazing offer for 5000 bonus miles after the first charge goes only to the addressee. The pathway is mostly grass, with a little driveway and sidewalk near the house mixed in for excitement.
With such a distant mailbox, I have to take Abbie with me while collecting the mail. If I left her home unsupervised for a couple minutes, she could throw a Weeble through not just the china cabinet, but through objects previously thought impervious, like a wall. When the weather is cold, bringing her outside becomes a major ordeal as I have to wrap her in layers of warm clothing, and she hates having to wear lots of clothing more than members of the University of Nebraska marching band hate Tommy Lee. When the weather is warm, like today when the high temperature is expected to hit 144 degrees (heat index of 168), taking her outside is no big deal since it involves minimal preparation. She doesn’t even need her hated shoes for such a short trip.
I always carry her out to the mailbox. I could let her walk, but she has a habit of moving in random directions, and I don’t have the patience to struggle with her for direction since I’m dying to know if any good coupons came today. On the return trip, though, I set her on the grass and let her go. She does a good job of staying on the narrow grass strip and running generally toward the house, especially if I walk behind her as discouragement for turning around and sprinting back to the mailbox. While she chugs in the proper direction, I read the mail, pausing only momentarily to ponder if I could be a winner.
The return trip always takes longer than the departing trip for several reasons. First, Abbie, with her stubby legs, just can’t move as quickly as I can no matter how hard she tries, even if she runs. I’m pushing her hard to rectify this with daily suicides run in the backyard. Second, her speed is never constant. Sometimes she sprints, and sometimes she stops moving to look around confusedly as if she were Ozzy Osbourne. She falls down a lot, too, and that slows her down considerably as she has to take time to pick herself back up, regain her bearings, and fall down again, this time crying so I have to carry her the rest of the way. Finally there’s the sidewalk. Rarely is the time when I don’t have to carry her from the sidewalk, across the driveway, and into the house. Abbie has created a game, for lack of a better word, where she will walk from the grass onto the sidewalk with no problem, but when she crosses from the concrete sidewalk onto the asphalt driveway, she takes a couple of steps, notices that she’s no longer on the sidewalk, and turns around to run back onto the sidewalk. She will repeat this process dozens of times, and no amount of coaxing or false promises of access to the television remote will usually convince her to run back to the house. The only break in this game is sometimes she will turn 90 degrees and run down the sidewalk.
As long as the weather is nice, I’ll humor her sidewalk game for several minutes, intervening only when she falls and hurts herself, or when she runs down the sidewalk far enough to run into the street. I generally only force her inside when she falls too much, or becomes too ornery about staying away from dangerous objects like moving vehicles or contagious hospital patients. I could force her to come inside earlier, but she’s happy outside, while she’d probably just whine inside. Anyway, I can read about the sale items at the grocery store just as easily outdoors.
Our mailbox is located far away from our house. I’d estimate the distance to be about 100 yards from our front door; that’s the equivalent of just under nine football fields. We have one centrally located mail receptacle with slots for all 31 units in our complex, similar to the system used by many apartments, dormitories, and prisons. A locked door individually seals each slot, ensuring that that amazing offer for 5000 bonus miles after the first charge goes only to the addressee. The pathway is mostly grass, with a little driveway and sidewalk near the house mixed in for excitement.
With such a distant mailbox, I have to take Abbie with me while collecting the mail. If I left her home unsupervised for a couple minutes, she could throw a Weeble through not just the china cabinet, but through objects previously thought impervious, like a wall. When the weather is cold, bringing her outside becomes a major ordeal as I have to wrap her in layers of warm clothing, and she hates having to wear lots of clothing more than members of the University of Nebraska marching band hate Tommy Lee. When the weather is warm, like today when the high temperature is expected to hit 144 degrees (heat index of 168), taking her outside is no big deal since it involves minimal preparation. She doesn’t even need her hated shoes for such a short trip.
I always carry her out to the mailbox. I could let her walk, but she has a habit of moving in random directions, and I don’t have the patience to struggle with her for direction since I’m dying to know if any good coupons came today. On the return trip, though, I set her on the grass and let her go. She does a good job of staying on the narrow grass strip and running generally toward the house, especially if I walk behind her as discouragement for turning around and sprinting back to the mailbox. While she chugs in the proper direction, I read the mail, pausing only momentarily to ponder if I could be a winner.
The return trip always takes longer than the departing trip for several reasons. First, Abbie, with her stubby legs, just can’t move as quickly as I can no matter how hard she tries, even if she runs. I’m pushing her hard to rectify this with daily suicides run in the backyard. Second, her speed is never constant. Sometimes she sprints, and sometimes she stops moving to look around confusedly as if she were Ozzy Osbourne. She falls down a lot, too, and that slows her down considerably as she has to take time to pick herself back up, regain her bearings, and fall down again, this time crying so I have to carry her the rest of the way. Finally there’s the sidewalk. Rarely is the time when I don’t have to carry her from the sidewalk, across the driveway, and into the house. Abbie has created a game, for lack of a better word, where she will walk from the grass onto the sidewalk with no problem, but when she crosses from the concrete sidewalk onto the asphalt driveway, she takes a couple of steps, notices that she’s no longer on the sidewalk, and turns around to run back onto the sidewalk. She will repeat this process dozens of times, and no amount of coaxing or false promises of access to the television remote will usually convince her to run back to the house. The only break in this game is sometimes she will turn 90 degrees and run down the sidewalk.
As long as the weather is nice, I’ll humor her sidewalk game for several minutes, intervening only when she falls and hurts herself, or when she runs down the sidewalk far enough to run into the street. I generally only force her inside when she falls too much, or becomes too ornery about staying away from dangerous objects like moving vehicles or contagious hospital patients. I could force her to come inside earlier, but she’s happy outside, while she’d probably just whine inside. Anyway, I can read about the sale items at the grocery store just as easily outdoors.
posted by Matt at
9:19 PM
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