838: Letters! Actual Letters!
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbearped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. One thing I didn't know about delivering mail, you're not supposed to walk down to the sidewalk after each house, you're supposed to cut across the lawn, to the next house, you don't want to finish the route on time. I mean, they time us, we're not supposed to go down to the sidewalk every time if we can avoid it. And you just walk across people's grass. Grass, yes. And everybody wants the government to be efficient, except for the mailman to walk across their grass. But people, like these guys, built a path for me. So yeah, there's a little dirt path in between these bushes. Because they're nice. I went out with a letter carrier named Grace, and she walked around. It was a pretty day, in a leafy, lovely neighborhood. Grace carried a shoulder bag with flats and catalogs and parcels. And of course, somebody built a path for her to cut to the house next door. She can talk to anybody. But she's interested in other people. So at this point, she knows at least a little bit about most of the people on her route. Most of them, she's actually seen their faces. She'll walk up to a house. Sometimes it'll be like the cousin out front or whatever in the art, and I'll even know that. I'll be like, you have the same face as the wife. And I know she has family in Denmark. You're the Denmark sister. I'll just know it when I'm walking up, and then she'll be like, oh, I told you, I got to just know a lot about people. Here's the house with a stay-at-home mom, whose son makes drawings for Grace, the public defenders who get public defender mail, but somehow also have an insanely posh house with gorgeous landscaping. There's the hardcore Christians, whose dog always lunges at the door, like he's going to break through the glass. There's the dad who organizes the kid's softbuggly, the Grace's daughter's in, and the guy with pancreatic cancer. He seems like he doesn't have much time left at all. And he's the nicest guy, and I'm, it's just, you know, can't help but think about it every day. Does he get a lot of visitors? Yes, and lots of mail started coming from old friends and stuff. Yeah. I'm not using Grace's real name, or telling you anything about where she works, so this private information can stay private, like it should. Our show name is about the mail. Grace's understanding of whose her and her route is like a pilot knowing the weather they're dealing with. It's very helpful to doing a job, like with this couple on the route, where the woman moved to the apartment across the hall and filed a forwarding address, and the guy did
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