The Mailbox

It's always a tense situation, checking the mailbox. Sometimes I'm excited, expecting a package. But always I have this little fear that something's going to show up and just piss me off. It happens every now and then. Years ago I got a letter from an insane ex's lawyer, threatening to sue me for breaking up and, apparently, stealing his socks. You'd think that after being in a relationship with me for five years he'd know I don't wear Wal-Mart socks.

Right before Christmas, of all times, I got not one, but TWO letters from the IRS within a month of each other. One said I hadn't reported some income from the previous year. The other said I hadn't reported some income from THREE years ago. They were right, and both were honest mistakes on my part, but it still sucked.

Today I had another double whammy. Apparently I was caught by one of Boulder's mobile cop-in-a-box cameras driving 30 something in a 25 through a neighborhood. Forty bucks. I also had a letter from the City of Milford Texas, telling me there was a warrant out for my arrest because I owed them $139.50 for a speeding ticket I got in February, exactly TEN YEARS AGO almost to the day. I clearly remember that incident. I was driving to Dallas on a rainy night. I was 25 years old and speeding and probably deserved the ticket, but that was the most Godawful little hell hole of a one-horse town to get a speeding ticket in. I had to drive all the way back out there to see the judge. I waited for about 3 hours in a dirt parking lot with about thirty other people, wondering if he was even going to show. None of wanted to leave because no one could have possibly lived within 100 miles. The judge finally showed up in his jeans and hat, driving a beat up old pickup. The "court" was a little shanty, the shell of a house probably 100 years old. After an absurdly long, rude ordeal that ended up consuming an entire day of my life, the judge wouldn't let me off. He didn't let anyone off that day, and something told me he never did. Speeders were undoubtedly their only source of revenue. Whatever happened after that, I apparently never finished paying off the ticket, or if I did the memory and records of it are lost to time. I guess they decided that after ten years they might aught to try and collect their money. I paid it. I got a confirmation number this time.

Other than this, I got a few of my regular bills and the usual junk mail. See, I really have no choice but to shop online at Williams Sonoma so that going to the mailbox won't always be such a drag.