I have a stack of January envelopes to post - and the add-on was already here. There is no rhyme reason to which envelope is added to which add-on. I make myself post them in order so that I don't get mixed up. I like the ALI stamp and came close to buying it - but then I switched to the new love stamp. The USPS has a special postmark to coordinate with the new love stamp and I am motivated to use it on the February exchange envelopes with the hopes that it looks great with the cancel....although, we have no idea which cancel I'll get when I mail them. Update - those stamps are still on my desk.
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From my collection of ephemera:
This story appeared in the Readers Write section of The Sun magazine. Each month there was a topic. This story appeared when the topic was MOVING OUT. I photocopied the story and it's been in my file of items that I sift through (every 5 years or so) and every time I read it, I chuckle. This time, I could toss the hard copy.
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THE FIRST TIME I MOVED OUT, I was only about five years old. With stern intent, I announced to my two older brothers and my older sister that I was leaving home for good. They did not try to talk me out of it. Instead, they helped me gather the things that, according to them, I'd need.
Although it was a bright midsummer day, the first items they told me I should take where my rain slicker and buckle boots. It was easier to put these on them to carry them. Also: a couple of warm blankets (for those cold winter nights I'd eventually encounter), a pillow, eight or 10 cans of soup, pots, and pans to cook with, some firewood, oatmeal, salt and pepper, utensils, a dozen eggs, some canned sardines, toilet paper, a gallon of drinking water, picture books, teddy bear, sheets and towels, and — last, but not least — the mattress from the babies crib. (I think I also had dry dog food because wherever I went, the dogs followed.)
With my siblings’ help everything was wrapped in blankets and pillowcases, and tied to the mattress which I would drag along behind me as I traveled the open road in my slicker and boots. My makeshift sledge must have weighed close to 100 pounds.
I manfully started off down the driveway at a pace so slow the dogs would walk ahead, lie down, and wait for me, panting in the heat. Eventually, the dogs gave up on me and headed back to the house.
After about twenty minutes, I had gotten maybe two hundred feet with my supplies and had already drunk most of my water, so I'm maneuvered my load into the shade of a tree and took a nap.
Sometime later, my brothers and sister came out and inquired as to whether I had changed my mind about leaving home. I told them I had just been pretending to leave, and, to their credit, they didn't even laugh, but helped me carry everything back and put it away. You might think that such responsible, wise and sensitive siblings would not repeatedly recount the story of my failed attempt to all their friends for many years to come, but you would be wrong.
Mark A. Hetts,
San Francisco, California.
