Postal perspective

This makes me sound old, but I can't believe how time is flying by. Every time I look up another week is gone. I am impatiently awaiting the call from Amanda saying "Meet us at the hospital!" Surely it will be any day now. I remember feeling like that (for a full month) with Carrie last November.

This morning I stood in line (twice) with Matt at the post office -- tax day! -- and as my favorite postman was dealing with our gazillion certified envelopes he started talking about his upcoming retirement. He said he used to enjoy being at work but lately it's all about upsales, and he's tired of spending all day encouraging little old ladies to pay extra for priority mail when he knows it's going on the same truck as the first-class mail.

He also told us stamps are going up to 44 cents in May. Supposedly rate increases are limited to once a year, but I swear they seem to come more frequently than that. I remember thinking the increase from 25 cents to 29 cents was a huge deal when it happened, but I was young then and had no context for judging.

OK, I just looked it up, and stamps cost 25 cents for less than three years -- April 1988 to February 1991! I doubt I would have noticed the increase at all had it not come during my pen-pal-obsession phase. I didn't buy my own stamps at that age, but I used an inordinate amount of them. Also, three years represented a much larger proportion of my life back then. Perspective is everything.

It's kind of like how (around the same time -- as, what, a third-grader?) I couldn't imagine getting used to saying "President Bush" because it sounded so choppy compared to "President Reagan," who'd been president all my life till then. Even in retrospect, I think "President Reagan" has a certain cadence, though.