The USPS notified us on saturday that since we are new occupants in the house we bought that this is as good a time as any for them to “upgrade” the neighborhood with streetside mailboxes. Our house is in an older neighborhood where it is common to see those old style mailboxes that are attached to the house, where the postmen of yore would come up and lift the hinge and drop in the mail, while carefully stepping over the glass bottles the milkman left, trying not to slip on the large block of ice from the icehouse.
So, in an effort to save the USPS $55 dollars a year1, we are now expected to furnish our own mailbox and install it at the curb, during which time they will conveniently hold all our mail hostage until it is done. I want to just call their bluff and say fuck it and not install one, but D isn’t quite as prepared as I am to abandon the Postal Service. I swear, all I ever get in the mail is advertisement packets, so it’d be no loss for me.
So now I’m thinking of sculpting up a novelty mailbox. Afterall, if I have to save them $55 a year, I can at least do it in style, right?
Here’s what I was thinking:
The pants would be hinged so it can open and close, but I was too lazy to make it animate. Thoughts?
1: I’m not sure how they come up with that $55 a year figure. I mean, if we round it down to $52 a year, that’d be a dollar a week. Considering the mail is delivered on 6 days of the week, that’s $0.16 a day. Considering it would take at most a minute to get out of the jeep, walk the 8 feet to our box and back, that $0.16 means they’d be making $10 an hour. Does that seem about right? Do they even get paid hourly? I kind of doubt it.
