That’s right. It’s that time of year.
Every now and then I order something on the Internet that I don’t have delivered to my two safe zones–work or parents’ house. It’s already bad enough that when a box arrives my dad just asks me if it’s my “little men” of miniature toy soldiers, or that the office staff tells me they got presents for me when they put a box of traded Monsterpocalypse figures in my mailbox. And this time, for some reason, I didn’t want to share the delivery of my Playstation 3.
(I don’t care that my coworker sold me my current PS2 and I cradled it in my arms right in front of my students. That was different)
So yesterday I drive home down the street and I see a truck blocking the road. I consider making several right turns to navigate the blocks to get around it and onto a side street that leads up to my home.
But that’s when I notice that the truck is brown and flashing its lights. The United Parcel Service owns this vehicle, and I’m still waiting for a shipment.
Instead of avoiding it, I tailgate and then circumvent it when it pulls up to a corner. When I turn, I constantly flick my eyes to watch it in my rear view mirror. It turns the opposite way and then it performs a three point turn to head toward my house.
And pass my block entirely. No Playstation on Thursday.
On Friday, I head to dinner to meet some former coworkers. It’s a good time filled with gossip, madness, and lies. However, I check my phone only to see that my wife has called me.
UPS was here, she says to me on the voicemail as my heart leaps, but I wasn’t home then. There’s a slip of paper here… And my heart is shot out of the sky.
The rest of the night I wait for the waiter to take my to-go order so that we can blow that budget Italian restaurant and get to the important business of picking up a package at the local UPS warehouse. I fidget, I fumble, I fork my pasta.
Finally, I’m free, and driving home to pick up the slip. I consider pulling over to call home and get the relevant numbers, but I’m near the scary forest preserves and am unwilling to stop there.
I hit ever stop light, stop sign, and stopped bus on the way home.
So now I have a weekend to plot the arrival of the PS3. I will win this hunt next time, UPS, and I will kill, skin and eat the prey that you carry to my front porch. But for now, maybe I should figure out which games to get first.