Mail is evil. This could be easily written off as one of my many neuroses, but, at the very least, history is on my side on this one.
Just ponder, for a second, the history of mail. I'm not talking about telegrams, those are too easy. I'm talking about the fucking Pony Express. You know, the days when "mailmen" were actually kickass cowboys that carried your mail on fucking horses through the deserts and mountains of the wild west. It's kind of like texting, only it takes a lot longer and there's a guy on a horse risking his life (and risking being kidnapped by a Mormon fellowship) so that you can send "omg lol wats up" across state lines. (I think AT&T might still use that system, actually.)
Just think of all of the evil things that have been done with mail. Anthrax. Bombs. Credit card bills. Publisher's Clearing House. Invitations to "parties" from creepy boys in your neighborhood in which you're probably going to be greeted at the door with chloroform, scissors, and a cucumber. It's all happened through the mail. Our government, completely unaware of the tremendous evils that can be done through mail, call mailmen and mailwomen public service employees and give them extra benefits for doing the "service" of exposing us to anthrax and cucumber rapists. It isn't right.
Today, I received this completely innocent-looking thing in the mail:
To most of you, this probably looks like an everyday poorly-drawn envelope with a strangely placed barcode and squiggly lines for addresses. However, my eyes, unblinded by the nationwide mail conspiracy, saw it as this:
Yeah, that's right, dragon wings. My CollegeBoard envelope had fucking dragon wings. With more motivation, I probably could have added fire, more Mormons, and a shower tension rod (old fear that I'll explain later), but this does the job of expressing all of the things I am afraid of in one place.
This discovery frightened and disturbed me. Why did this take so long to come? What if I actually did fail? Where did that baby come from? All of these questions burned in my mind simultaneously, and I was nearly unable to proceed.
After about 5 minutes of sweating and squirming in place, I gained the resolve to open the envelope. I was almost certain of failure, so I made a point to read all of the useless information about myself at the top of the page. Eventually, I could resist my desire to see the number and get it over with no longer, and I looked to the right of "AP US History," bracing myself for a 2.
The dragon wings disappeared. The baby was released from its chewy fate and lived on. The "LOL YOU FAILED" sticker fell off abruptly, and the Mormons started cheering. I saw a 5.
It won't teach me anything, of course -- I will still expect failure every time; it's hard-coded into my genes, much like my adoration for Liza Minnelli -- but it's a relief to know that my mail doesn't have dragon wings.
