A trip to the Larchmont post office

Last week I took your regular-ol trip to my local post office. I needed to mail a package. After getting postage for the package, I realized this being the holiday season and all, I should probably get some stamps. I'm not much of a holiday card sending kinda person, but I send a few. I asked for Hanukkah stamps. The postal employee cheerfully told me they were all out, "given Larchmont's sizable Jewish population as you know, I'm sure you're not surprised."

Actually, I was completely surprised. First, at the thought of Larchmont having a sizable Jewish population - it was news to me. And second, that the Jewish population had managed to clean out the post office of all its Hanukkah stamps by mid-December.

So I say "I can use any stamps, just as long as they're not Christmas." And he says, "How about Kwanzaa?" "Sorry," I say, "Any stamps as long as they're not Christmas or Kwanzaa. I meant anything non-holiday - don't you usually have snowflakes or snowmen or something like that?"

The postal employee replies, "No, I don't think so. We have all the holidays though. We even have Jihad stamps."

I look at him blankly.

He continues, "I know you won't want those. To be honest, they'rea tough sell. They came out right after 9-11. Bad timing. No one wanted to buy them. A few people did, I think they felt guilty. So they bought the Jihad stamps, but in general, they're not a good seller. Not like the Hanukkah stamps!"

At this point, I am kinda ready to leave without stamps, but being a small town post office with a small town feel, the lady in line at the teller next to me says, "Get the ones with the man carrying the heart. They're perfect."

Given that I had very low stamp requirements, I was sure these stamps were indeed perfect. The guy brings me green heart stamps. "Perfect!" I exclaim, delighted to be getting out of this suddenly too-long and too-religious post office outing, when my friendly postal line neighbor looks over and barks "Not the green ones! Those aren't the right ones! It has to be the red ones!"

Without consulting me, the teller then goes frantically from bay to bay looking for the red ones. At the last bay, he grabs a strip, and shouts to me "These are the last ones! You got here just in time!"

PS In case you're wondering like I was: it's Eid, not Jihad.