These are the people in your neighbourhood

It's been eight whole days since I last wrote, becuase I was shocked into silence over the response to my last post.


KIDDING!!!!!


I have just been really busy and/or lazy.

I've been busy with kid stuff and uni stuff and gathering and reconsidering and then returning and then buying new versions of Christmas presents to send to my dear friends and fam at home in the O.Z.

That necessitated about six trips to the post office, of which today I conducted three and the last led me to this nasty human. Allow the story to unfold...

~~~~~~~~~~~~ doodle do doodle do doodle do wiggle-fingers-make-Wayne's-World-dream-sequence-noise~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I finally finalized all my presents, wrapped and labeled them at home and took them to Post Office A. At this point Squirms and I had just come from yoga and we were walking down the street all bourgey-suburban holding hands and it was nice and pleasant. As soon as we arrived a woman came to the door and put up a sigh saying 'Office closed for computer malfunction'. It was like a scene from an movie set in the Depression, where just as our hero is getting to the front of the line for jobs at the canning factory, an old man walks out with a sign saying 'no work here'. Boo.

So we walk back to the car and head to Post Office B. At Post Office B I wait nicely in line and Squirms waits squirmily in line then we get to the front, fill out a page long customs for and then, THEN, the lady tells me I can't send perfume to Australia. Oh BULLSHIT. I fought it a little bit, but the way that the Post Office clerks kept consulting with each other and pointing at regulations that said things like "may be hazardous" and "if wrapped improperly", and me being a lawyer and knowing the difference between the language of obligation and the language of authorization, made me think this was just a matter of their judgement, so if I just took that shit home and relabeled it 'cosmetics', we wouldn't have an issue. So I did, and that led me to Post Office C.

At Post Office C there was a Christmas tree with ornaments. Squirms dropped to the floor as soon as we went in and was, no kidding, patting the ornaments when the clerk yelled at her to stop touching the tree. So I got her back, we wait, I get to the front with my box of cosmetics and pick Squirms up to keep her with me while we sort out the mailing. On the counter is a stuffed toy dog with a Santa Claus hat and a bell on top. So, Squirms starts wiggling the bell and making it ring. I asked the clerk if she could hold the dog, and she says no, she doesn't want her to break it. Break it. A stuffed toy dog. Then she turns to the man next to me and says personally, I would never let my child touch someone else's stuff. Some people have no respect for other people's things. So fine, she's a mad bitch. So *I* picked up the dog and was wiggling it around for her making its hat ring. The lady snatched it out of my hands and was all really don't touch it she'll break it. Oooookkaaayyy... so now the lady is not a mad bitch but acting like an *actual child* DON'T TOUCH MY PRECIOUS THINGS YOU'LL BREAK THEM!! She was not sharing like a big girl.

I wanted to say to her: lady, you work at the Post Office. That means at Christmas, people will come in and want to mail packages and since you only open Monday to Friday from 9-5, that means sometimes they will have children. So if you don't want them to play with the toys you have lying around, maybe don't put toys around. That was a motherfucking toy dog in a Santa hat. A toy for children. And she was guarding it like it was the Arc of the Covenant.

But I didn't. I finished writing the label and then let Squirms hold the plastic biro while I paid. Which the lady also proceeded to snatch back, becuase, hey, who would let a child practice air-writing (not chewing, not drawing) with a 25c plastic biro to keep them occupied while their parents paid for their goods? Blargh. At least we were done at that point.

You may be wondering what was the response of the man to whom the commentary on my parenting skills was addressed. Well, since his English was not great, and he was sending a package to Italy, which the clerk had just yelled at him to relabel, since he had addressed it Italian and this is America! You have to write in English!, he just kind of went, yeah, heh heh and ignored her.

I have no idea how that package is going to find its way to the actual address in Venezia, Italia, that she made him cross out and rewrite in English to Venice, Italy.

Anyway, I was all steamed up about this (and no shit, I nearly cried in the Post Office when she snarked at the Italian Dude) and then I was like, hey whatever. You have a terrrrrrible job. You're probably way more poor than me and you're black and you live in the South. People probably treat you like shit all the time. I can take it. In the end I was glad I wasn't a bitch back to her.