Your daughter leaves to spend two weeks at a summer camp in Tennessee. And you sit down to write her an actual letter – like by hand, with paper and a pen the way Tolstoy and maybe Raymond Carver once did. And it’s some of your best work. And you feel an urgent need to mail it now, so it will get to her as soon as possible. But you gave her all your stamps to take with her. So you’ll have to go to the post office, which is fine, because you can use that little self-service stamp dispenser machine and mail it at the same time.
As you grab your keys, you remember your hair, which is a problem. It feels like you haven’t had a haircut since the Carter administration. And you’ve spent the past two days in highly chlorinated pools and water slides without showering. As a result, your hair has taken on the stiff and unkempt quality of a badger tail. No hat can tame these Medusa locks. But then you remember the post office is closed on Sunday. So nobody will see you. So it’s fine. You’ll get in, get the stamps, drop your letter, and get out. It’ll be like Oceans Eleven, but with a splash of Eraserhead.
You drive to the post office which, as you imagined, is deserted. You shuffle inside, undaunted by your torn Beastie Boys T-shirt or your Einstein, finger-in-an-electric-socket hair. You step up to the machine, tip-tap-tip on its screen, insert your card and . . . nothing. You try again, but it’s not reading your Amex card. You try your debit card. You try your corporate card. Your try your Amex again. Nada.
You stand there, clutching your daughter’s letter under your frozen volcano of hair, and fret. The letter doesn’t *have* to go out now, but damnit you *want* it to go out now. You made a special trip. And you’re just gonna get distracted tomorrow, and then a week will pass, and you’ll be in the Daddy Doghouse. And all for want of a stamp!
Where else can you get a stamp nearby? You step outside and see a Fiesta supermarket right next door. Crap. You’ve always been a little afraid of Fiesta – not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because you are the whitest man on the planet. You’re so white, you actually apply your refund to next year’s taxes. You’re so white, your unsheathed butt could be used as a lighthouse. You’re so white that an albino convention . . . has nothing funny about it, and there’s no joke here at all. The point is that the last place you want to go right now (other than an in-no-way-funny convention of albinos) is a Fiesta supermarket. But it’s the most expedient option. So go you must.
You text your wife, explaining why you have to go to Fiesta and joking that if you don’t come home, it’s because you’ve fallen for a Latina who doesn’t work nights or weekends. But the truth is, you sent the text because some small part of you fears you might not make it back, and that your wife may need clues to help find your body. And absent your text, you imagine a detective asking your wife “is it possible that he visited the Fiesta supermarket before coming home?” And you hear her emphatic reply: “There is no fucking way that he set foot in a Fiesta!”
You pull your car into the lot and park next to a pickup truck from the Cretaceous Period. You duck beneath the seven collapsible ladders mounted on its bed and amble toward the store. It’s then that you remember you look like an escaped mental patient. But as you scan the lot, you see several even less presentable people. Indeed, some of these folks could be murder hoboes. And while that thought is disconcerting, at least you’re not standing out wearing the attire of someone who wouldn’t be killed at a Fiesta.
You step inside the doors, earnestly trying to remember the difference between a mango and a papaya. Surely there will be some sort of quiz. And if you fail, they will laugh at you, and you’ll have to relive the seventh grade, only this time the jibes will be in Español, which will hurt both less and more.
You step up to the service desk and/or Western Union kiosk, the glass of which is obscured by a dizzying array of posters, instructions and handwritten notes. You look for a poster that mentions stamps, to no avail. You also look for any signs mentioning the obligatory purchase of a piñata, and are relieved to find none.
A woman steps out from the back and you ask her if they sell stamps. They do. You ask for a book of them and drop your Amex card on the counter. You learn that they only take debit cards. You hand her yours – a card you never use – and she says “your PIN”. Then, like some brain dead zombie alien, you begin to recite your PIN to her aloud. She says “No, no! You input your PIN. On the key pad.” Because of course you do, dipshit. And now the murder hoboes behind you have heard the first three digits of your ATM PIN. And now you kinda deserve whatever happens to you. And you’re so pissed at yourself that maybe you might help them murder you.
And you get your stamps. And you start to walk briskly out of the store. But not before you see that a friendly dude from TCU has a table set up for some cause or another. And a kind woman is handing her granddaughter a balloon. And some harmless teenagers are walking in and giggling about whatever teenagers giggle about. And in one unknowable moment, your ridiculous prejudice seems to evaporate. And this place ain’t so bad.
And you walk back to your car at a relaxed pace. And you pick up the discarded soda can that you had ignored on the way in, and drop it in the trash can at the post office a minute later. And you head home, and begin writing your daughter a second letter.