10/1 Not only did I encounter the mailman in the lobby today, I also finally chose to talk to him. It has come to the point where more than half, if not all of my mail goes missing. Which I know because I get an email with scans of each mailpiece before it arrives, and almost none of them ever shows up in my mailbox. Including my passport, including my social.

It wasn’t easy to not put him on the defense immediately – a nice, friendly, hard-working, conscientious guy no doubt. And I really didn’t want to blame anyone, I just wanted to know. Because my mailbox, 916, – and he knew that without looking – is not in the same column of the big panel of mailboxes as the other ones from the ninth floor, it’s in a different column further to the right, hard to find if you don’t carefully look for it.

And so, while we were still talking, he walked over and flung open the column with the ninth floor boxes, and grabbed the huge pile of mail in the box of 915, and oh yes, there it was, all my lost mail from back into July, including my passport, including my social.

I was on vacation, he said, fully expecting an outburst of anger. Your very right, I said. I am not blaming anyone. I’m just glad I found my mail. And now I know where to look. Maybe if you put a sticker inside 915 that says 916 is to the right, or something?