When the Postal Service Delivers

From September of 2006, when I stopped getting The New Yorker, until this last Thursday, the postal service had failed me. My campus center box was perpetually filled with intracampus leaflets. The occasional snippet of paleontological news or Halloween card from older relatives provided a brief morale boost, but nothing to redeem my confidence in the mail.

This situation changed last Thursday with the delivery of a thoroughly-taped smallish rectangular box. My aunt and uncle had providentially shipped a care package containing toxic waste.

When I was somewhere short of six years old, a collection of family made a trip to Palm Springs. On the journey, we encountered a candy store that stocks comedic confections. The stop remains one of my most vivid memories from that trip, beside a harrowing incident in the shallow end of a swimming pool watching my brief existence flash before my eyes.

As an avid thumb-sucker in those days, my favorite purchase was a giant sour candy thumb. For the next decade, I reaped incalculable pleasure from staring at the pristine package in my glass candy jar. One day I'll have a psychiatrist analyze my overattachment to candy.

My aunt and uncle somehow remembered how much I loved that shop, so when they stopped by there recently, they got a small selection for deprived Nephew Miller. Of the contents of my newly received care package, the most apt is the Mallow Dog.

After his penetrating coverage of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, you think JT could have identified the Mallow Dog as marshmallow in composition. I guess there's always room for improvement in literary analysis.

The next item found in the exhibit could be slightly more nutritious, assuming it's ever consumed. Considering the surprising number of underground dog food eaters various sources claim exist, I hope my relatives don't count me among their deviant ranks...

The final gift that the USPS beneficiently passed along is especially touching. My uncle and I share a genetic inclination (some might also call it a defect) for humor lavatorial in nature.

Let me thank the Postal Service for sponsoring something beside a Tour de France team--Miller's happiness.