The Merry Mailman

There are many people in our lives that we like to call friends. But are they really? Truth is the word friend is a somewhat an ambiguous term. We have Facebook friends for example but are they in reality? Most I would venture to say are not more than Hallmark acquaintances that we rarely or never see. This is a story about someone and I like to think of him as my friend that carries letters and is more significant to me than most of any follower on Instagram or Facebook.  Each day I ride my bike through my neighborhood and invariably if my timing is right I pass the Merry Mailman. With this man I experience someone who retains a demeanor that never wavers. He is cheerful, loquacious, funny and never in a bad mood. And what’s even more unusual he’s not my friend on the aforementioned Facebook, or a follower on Instagram and I don’t have his email. On top of that I don’t even know his name.*But this Merry Mailman typifies something more than just a someone with a sunny disposition he is professional that performs his vocation with a discernment unlike many of his counterparts not only in the postal service but in many other career callings as well. Delivering mail on foot particularly in hot humid South Florida is not exactly and excuse the pun a walk in the neighborhood. He does it with pizzazz and you don’t often see your postal carrier with gesticulating moves like this man. No disrespect but the mail carrier on my route delivers our posts in perfunctory fashion no smile no emotion no vitality and certainly no animation. Not my friend every step is bounding and his energy is reminiscent of a lithium battery. 

With this man I experience someone who retains a demeanor that never wavers. He is cheerful, loquacious, funny and never in a bad mood. And what’s even more unusual he’s not my friend on the aforementioned Facebook, or a follower on Instagram and I don’t have his email. On top of that I don’t even know his name. But this Merry Mailman typifies something more than just a someone with a sunny disposition he is professional that performs his vocation with a discernment unlike many of his counterparts not only in the postal service but in many other vocations as well. Delivering mail on foot especially in hot humid South Florida is not exactly and excuse the pun a walk in the neighborhood. 

The Merry Mailman is an exclamation point on my ride and I look for him each time I clip into my bike and we always have something to say to each other. It’s rarely a matched tete a tete in fact rarely so but it matters not but it’s an exchange that is often invigorating and always spontaneous and extemporaneous. Sometimes I hear him laugh when my words spill out and that makes me smile as words can have a lasting affect bouncing off one to the other.   However his natural charm doesn’t need any assistance and when he drops his letters in each box they have an extra postmark on them “From Your Merry Mailman”.  

*His name is Arnie