TheBanyanTree: Fwd: UPS Strikes Again

[Tobie Shapiro]

>But how did that package get THERE?
>
>
>

November 20, 100000000005


Dear Recipients,

	In 1991, our house and everything in it, 
save what I could save, burned down in the 
Berkeley/Oakland hills Fire.  The great fire.  We 
were cast out into the world without an address. 
And we began our odyssey of moving from place to 
place.  We moved seven times in three years.  I 
don't mean to say that we lived in seven 
different places.  I mean we went through the 
moving process seven times.  There were many 
addresses, and each time, we had to put in those 
change of address forms.  Many packages and 
letters travelled our route trying to catch up 
with us in our new location.

	One of the unhinging factors was that 
twice in this odyssey, we lived with my parents. 
They have the same last name that I do.  And so 
the perversion of people and addresses began. 
When we moved from my parents' house to a new 
house, I put in those change of address forms. 
Did I expect the United States Postal Service to 
get it right?  I did not.  But I didn't expect 
what happened.

	Tobie Shapiro has moved.  Tobie Shapiro 
is now somewhere else.  And the twist was that 
mailing lists began to convert my mother's 
address to my new address.  My father would get 
mail with my address on the envelope.  To this 
day, I get mail for my father and he's been dead 
for nine years.  I gave up writing, "Not at this 
address.  Return to sender," on the envelope and 
sending it back.  It didn't work.  And likewise, 
or vice versa, my mother will get mail for me at 
her address.  How these names get all mixed up on 
mailing lists and then disseminate geometrically 
from the central mistake is the marvel.  It is 
just a marvel to watch.  Like someone has started 
a chain letter, where the recipient is to put my 
name on a new address, cross out my father's 
name, send him mail at my address, put their own 
names with my address at the bottom of the list, 
and send copies of the letter to fifty of their 
favourite best friends.  After a while it adds 
up. (Do not break the chain.  Some people have 
broken the chain and were swallowed by the United 
States Postal Service within days.  They have 
been ground up and made into pulp on which 37¢ 
commemorative stamps are then printed.  They are 
ironically mailed to their own addresses.  Don't 
let this happen to you.  Don't break the chain.)

	I do frequently get mail for me at my 
address.  I regard this as a minor miracle.

	Yours,

	and then yours,

	and then yours,

	Tobie


-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net