Monday Mail Call: The Postcard and The Politician
Remember when you were a kid and you got something in the mail?
Didn't it make you feel like the most special person in the world? I know it did for me. It was the same excitement of lifting my pillow the morning after I'd lost a tooth to find the tooth fairy had left me a quarter.
Years later, when email became the correspondence of choice, I felt the same way. That whole, "You've Got Mail" glow came over me whenever I saw the number of emails in my in-box. Of course 90% of those were offers of XXX videos or prescription drugs from Canada, but until I knew that, there was always that tooth fairy excitement.
Mail is still exciting for me and I wanted to share that excitement with this new feature on Megan's Minute, Monday Mail Call.
Rena leaves the mail on my kitchen counter everyday when she comes to walk Daisy, so at the end of work today, after bursting into the house and letting Daisy out in the yard, I eagerly looked on the counter. Lying there, a newsletter and a postcard.
And neither of them were addressed to me.
The newsletter, a classic politician's suck-up to the voters, was addressed to "Residential Customer." In it our county executive brags about the "2007 State of the County" and how our property taxes are lower. I've found that's a universal politician's rule. If you're bragging to suburban voters, always, always talk about lower property taxes.
The good tax news: the county portion of my property tax bill decreased from 22.7% to 17.7%. The bad tax news: the school taxes went up by 5%. So don't blame the suck-up county exec, blame the school board.
I'm single, I got no kids---and at this rate, I'm not likely to---so when do I get that return on my school taxes? Well personally, I get it when I let Daisy illegally romp in the school yard when nobody's looking.
On to the postcard. It's an invitation to a country day camp's 25th anniversary "Birthday Bash" on the 4th of July.
Best of all, it's addressed to the previous owners of my house---who moved away thirteen years ago!
The invite is for "all past and present counselors, campers and alumni family members to join us in the celebrating." Guess that lets me out anyway. My only day camp experiences consist of the day I screamed for a solid hour during a so-called swimming lesson in a pool of arctic cold water, and when I got older, working as a Y.M.C.A. day camp counselor-in-training for two months. It was all bad food and mosquito bites, but this time the campers were at my mercy instead of the other way around and that was just fine with me.
The front of the postcard invitation is a happy collage of "fun at camp" pictures straight out of a Hayley Mills movie. There are inspirational signs like, "Happy Trails," "Discover The Spirit," and "Dream Big." A funny little kid with one of those broad, phony, "take the picture already" smiles is posed with what looks like a warm hearted teenage counselor. What do you bet she's really a two pack a day chain smoker with a scary obsession forJuicy Couture.
I need to RSVP by June 15.
Happy Trails.
And that's Monday's Mail Call.
Tda
