Mail Box # 27

This past week the United States Postal Service raised the price of stamps once again adding another two cents to the price of postage for a first class letter. Like most people I counted the remaining older stamps I had on hand, went to the Post Office and purchased an equal number of two cent stamps. Always trying to do the right thing I placed a two cent stamp along with a old stamp on the first letter I mailed after the price increase had taken place. The following day when I checked for new mail I found a hand written note from my rural postal carrier in Box 27. The note informed me that I did not need to add a two cent stamp when using a Forever stamp. What the heck was the postal carrier talking about? Sure enough when I checked my remaining old stamps they were Forever stamps. Living in the rural area I do, when ever I need more stamps I just leave money in the mail box and the following day the postal carrier leaves the stamps in my mail box. The postal carrier had left me several books of Forever stamps some time last year and I've been using them almost a year without knowing they were Forever stamps. Guess I need to start paying more attention to the things I take for granted.
The personal note from my postal carrier got me to thinking about how most of of us get our mail today. E-mail has taken over most of our mail duties leaving the US Postal Service relegated to a billing service. Which mail service you choose says a lot about you and what you stand for.
@mac.com: You are an Apple fan and probably have an iPod grafted to your head. You can usually be found in the hippest non chain coffee shop typing away on a $3000 aluminum MacBook Pro, white ear buds properly positioned in your ears and an iPhone 3G at your ready.
@gmail.com: In 2004 I thought I was pretty special because I had been invited to use Google's free e-mail allowing me to ditch my now pass'e @yahoo account. Gmail users hate Microsoft and have entrusted all their personal information to the Do No Evil Google guys. All gmailers are always trying to be twenty something when they are really 30-60 years of age.
@yahoo.com: Yahoo was the place to be in the late 90s. It was the first mail portal that was not related to your ISP mail account so you thought it was kind of secret and loved it's forwarding ability. It also had all those little simile faces, Yahooers love their simile faces.
@aol.com: Having the aol handle was all the rage in the 90s then dial up bombed and the AOL post office all but closed. The only reason most people even still have an AOL e-mail account is because they love to hear "You've Got Mail". If you fit into this category you qualify to have the AARP magazine delivered to you or you are a soccer mom who is still using Windows 95. Anything more complicated than a generic Facebook page scares the hell out of you.
No e-mail account: Now what is e-mail again? You are in your teens or early 20s and you equate sending e-mail with using a fax machine, watching broadcast TV and buying CDs. You text and IM and that's about it.
Which ever e-mail service you choose I don't think any of them will ever leave a nice note for you like my postal carrier did. Yes electronic mail is nice but it will never replace the feeling you get when you walk to the mailbox, open it's door and see a letter that has been placed inside by the warm hand of a postal carrier. It all seems so personal, the human to human thing. Now if only I could get my postal carrier to announce "You've Got Mail" every time he or she opened the door on Box 27 or maybe Box 27 could automatically run up it's red flag every time a letter arrived, I might be able to give up e-mail. Until that times arrives I will continue to look into Mail Box # 27 each and every day never knowing what the warm hand of my postal carrier may have placed inside.