WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING IMPORTANT

Snail mail is a good term. Even before email and gmail and "you got mail". When you're looking for that check, that invitation, that letter and it doesn't come and it doesn't come, well it's one of life's frustrations.

Acceptance to college, a contract, a picture, an order--all have caused grief. One big pneumatic tube, actually a line of pneumatic tubes from every business, every house in the country, instantly connected. Now there's an idea, Al Gore.

And there are days that we could use a mail box the size of the one pictured. Now, take out all the stuff we'll just throw away, sometimes without much of a perusal at all, and we'd never need one that large.

Plus, I can identify the date, at least the year, that junk mail escalated into what it has become. 1983. We moved into a new house, but still received catalogs and weekly specials addressed to the previous owner. I remember commenting, "She must have ordered everything. She must have never left the house to shop."

It wasn't three months later that we were getting a similar number of circulars. How they have increased since then. But back then I never got anything from some organization entitled AARP.