Package!

They say that in the Navy, the mail is mighty fine
Last night I got a letter from 1999.

Half of my ship is entirely male - separate building. (Actually, half of my building is also male, but whatever.) This is the same building that houses the mail room. In order to keep their quarterdeck from being clogged by people who actually shower on a regular basis (heaven forfend!), they post an every-other-day list of who's got mail in our lounge and theirs.

I was elated to see that I'd had a package, AND a card. Yay mail! You actually never know what a package is, because the timing of delivery is all goofed up. I will explain in a moment.

Package was...my birthday present. From my grandmother.

For anyone who knows ME, my birthday was a month ago. For anyone who knows my grandmother, there's not a chance she put this in the mail late. For anyone who knows the military, this is completely par for the course.

I was talking with Faramir about this one. We've concluded that the speed that any mail makes it on base is inversely proportional to its size. I've never had a letter take more than a week. One of my friends sent me chocolate for my birthday - very appreciated. Arrived the day after, very nice. Happy day. One of my camp friends sent a translation of the Bible that he knew I wanted (I grew up with an NIV, but I like reading other translations, too*), and that arrived less than a week after my birthday. Three pounds of deliciously dense cookie-bars? Yes, that'll take about a month.

Although, we had to conclude, it's far better this way than the opposite. If speed was directly proportional to size, I can see my sister mailing me a refrigerator, just so that my roommate could capture the instant of puzzled horror on my face as this behemoth comes flying through the door and pins me to the wall.

But! Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!


*Thus far, my favorite was a leather-bound (nice nice nice leather - oh, no, I'm not a tactile person by any means. Yeah, I just liked holding this one. Nice nice nice - I have leather issues, it seems.) NASB. I didn't even have it a year before it vanished. Not only that, but it vanished the DAY I was sworn in, in the very building where I was sworn in. That seemed uncomfortably like an omen at the time.