Over 50, Still Kickin'

I don't know if you have noticed, but elderly people spend a lot of time looking out the window. No, not just to see what the weather is doing. They are watching their neighbors for entertainment purposes, much like other folks watch TV. Apparently, our life was an ongoing soap opera for one of our neighbor ladies for awhile.

We've been blessed with Paul having a mail route close to our home for most of his postal career. This meant he could come home for lunch. It's been wonderful for the girls and me to be able to connect with him midday. For the few years when this was not possible, the day was sooo long without him!

Most of our neighbors got the idea fairly quickly that the mail truck parked out in front of our house everyday about noontime was Paul's, and that he was home for a sandwich. It was pretty much a no-brainer -- except for one elderly woman, who got the notion in her noodle that the lady at our house had something of a peculiarly spicy variety going on with the mailman. Now, she was partially right: the lady at our house does have a spicy little romance going on with her mailman, but since he's my husband I think it's probably OK.

In vain did her son explain to her that it was all right. "He lives there, Mom! He's just home for lunch. They've got a little girl. She's home during the day, too."

But the idea that something soap opera-ish was going on had lodged in her cranium, and there was no getting it to budge. The possibility that the mailman could live in the same neighborhood that he delivered to was incomprehensible. Perhaps the idea that the mailman lived a normal, ho-hum existence outside of delivering mail was incomprehensible as well. Every day, she watched for that mail truck to pull up in front of our house. Every day, she timed how long it sat there. And every day, she clucked her tongue to her family about the shenanigans going on over at the neighbors'.

We heard the whole tale over the back fence from her son many months later and all had a hearty laugh over it. I had never dreamed of being such an interesting character. That my neighbors would give me more than a few seconds' thought, and that the thoughts would be of such an unusual nature, was a novel idea in itself! I doubt if he ever did convince Mom.

On the Serious Side

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