dear john...

Did anyone know there really is such thing as the Dead Letter Office? I guess when I was little I'd heard about it once or twice, but I mistakenly thought it was the place where letters for dead people went after they died. This Tuesday I found out that theory was slightly inaccurate.

Sunday night I was trying to wrap up some loose ends at work, so on my way to grab some food, I gathered a bunch of letters to be mailed, both private and work related, so I could drop them off and cross the task off my to-do list. I searched my office high and low for stamps, made sure all the envelopes were sealed, and proudly left with my stack of mail. I pulled around the moon-shaped drive and pulled up as close as I could to the big blue drop box. Double checked to ensure they all had stamps. Yep. Check. And as I tossed them down the chute I realized, all too late, that although they might all have stamps, not all of them had addresses. Nooooo!

Two of the notes were thank you's from Christmas - I'm a lot behind! I had actually written them over a month ago, but long story short, they were lost and only recently discovered. Looks like they'll be lost again.

I called on Monday to see what happened to letters without addresses. Who even does that? Sheesh. The Post Office would never pick up the phone, so I decided to drive there before work. I get there and no one is manning the office. In fact, all the lights are off and the door is locked. Great - does anyone even work around here? (I accidentally sighed that outloud) A woman checking her PO Box graciously explained in was President's Day and they were closed.

Brain-head move #2 within 24 hours.

An even longer story short, I got ahold of the Post Office on Wednesday. After explaining to the man what happened, he asked if I'd at least included a return address on the envelope? Dude, if the letters had return addresses, I wouldn't be desperately searching the post office in an effort to track them down.

He said I had to contact the Dead Letter Office within 30 days to see if it can be found at retrieved. That's when I found out a Dead Letter Office is really a place for letters without a home. An interesting thought, really. But I just want my letters back so I can share them with the loved ones intended.

So Laura, Steve & Sharon - if you receive thank you's four months late, it's not my fault. They're stuck in an office somewhere with no place to call home.