Mail is Like a Box of Chocolates

My mailbox is like a box of chocolates. I’m not talking about good chocolate. I’m talking about the kind of chocolate that after extensive examination, using most of my senses: sight to analyze the color and swirl, smell for clues, feeling it’s weight, shaking it to ascertain density by sound, and nibbling a tiny taste off the corner of the most propitious piece, almost always leaves me disappointed.

I’d spit the vile confection into a napkin and naturally try again, from the beginning, ferreting out the next, visually examining the swirl, shape, and color, lifting and considering its weight, smelling, and finally: taste, spit out, and repeat.

Defeated, I’d go through entire boxes finding one or two palatable treats. I wasn’t wasteful. I did put the candy back in the box, bites missing from every piece.

I was young, and this was my mom’s chocolate. She didn’t like what I had done and set up rules to be implemented immediately. I had one pick— one! Is there a chocolate equivalent of a sommelier? I would have hired one. I was like an addict. I might as well have been stealing money from her wallet to buy drugs. I resorted to sticking my thumb into the bottom of every piece to investigate, literally on the down-low. I’m ashamed.

Boxes these days, for you, coddled youngsters, have charts. There is no risk. You can not possibly understand the consequences of a bad decision, because you have directions. You are GPS guided in your bubble-wrapped world. When I was young, driving anywhere, I’d give myself at least an hour cushion, in case I got lost, and I was late anyway. My sense of direction is no better than my chocolate choosing talent. Don’t judge me, you Mapquest babies.

We were talking about mailboxes: bills don’t fill them as they did in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, because today we have auto-deduct and deposit. Mail today is usually junk advertising, sometimes a purchase long expected, and once in a Blue Moon a good surprise. Sometimes advertising is disguised as important, real mail. I know this because an old friend of mine’s job was to design advertising in a way that would impel people to open the envelope rather than toss it still sealed. I’ve learned the hard way to open and look at every envelope because I have thrown out rebate checks.

I don’t have to tell you my opinion of our kleptocratic kakistocracy. My opinion has been shared, it is rational, based on fact, and it is the only right opinion. There can not be two correct opinions at this point in history. There are liberals, and there are the bad guys- greedy billionaires and their useful idiots.

My mailbox yesterday contained an envelope that looked like it might have had a fudge center. Looking at the seal that resembled that of the IRS, I lifted it gauging the weight, shook it for no rational reason, and I scratch and sniffed it. No clues. I finally bit off the corner, because it’s not my mom’s mailbox.

I was the lucky recipient of a ballot from the Heritage Foundation, a “conservative think tank.” The accompanying letter informed me that I had been selected to receive the enclosed ballot (lucky me!) and continued: “angry liberals don’t think the American people want to keep their tax cut…” After that, I saw white. Rage took control of my “angry liberal” body.

Lucky for me I found a sharpy nearby, Trump’s weapon of choice. I can’t be sure what happened next, because I was blinded by fury, but I think I covered every inch of the document and ballot with expletives, returned the sheets to the prepaid envelope, then put it back in my mailbox to be returned to sender.

President Kay Cole James, in the event that my ballot never makes it to your desk I will say fuck you—squared. That was my vote.

It was the most satisfying piece of propaganda I’ve chewed up in a long time; it was cherry-filled, maraschino cherry, not that fake creamy cherry-flavored retch inducing blech.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.amp.html