yesterday at the post office, i was in line to ship some things.  a customer at the counter was trying to buy a book of stamps with egrets on them.  a book of stamps, not a roll of stamps.  the roll of stamps was not going to work.  she needed the book.  with the egrets.

while she waited for the postal employee to find her stamps, the customer took her baby out of his nearby stroller.  she whispered something into the baby’s ear, and then she danced him around a little bit, humming a terrible song from a local amusement-park commercial.

the postal employee returned with the sad news that she couldn’t find a book of egrets, and asked the customer what kind of stamps she wanted instead.  she looked through the stamp samples before settling on some john wayne ones.

“we’re getting john wayne,” she said to the baby.  “yes, we are.  we’re getting john wayne.”

the guy in line behind me (who was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt) was impatient.  “stamp collectors,” he snorted.  “the old ones aren’t even worth anything.”  i wanted to tell him that the customer was obviously not a stamp collector, and that john wayne commemorative stamps probably weren’t that old, but i decided not to get involved.

this is why i don’t ever leave the house.  there’s never anything good out there.