phil jacobsen

Not in a Day’s Work

I’ve seen domestic fights and child abuse. I found a guy passed out in his car and I didn’t know if he was drunk, dead or trying to commit suicide so I let the police figure that one out. Every day I smell drugs and a couple of times I’ve been offered a smoke, drink or random pills. And today, I saved a life.

At the Post Office we really excel in delivering little letters, magazines, advertisements and other little pieces of paper that go directly from your mailbox into the trash. Packages on the other hand are slightly more problematic. Packages can be anything from the size of a small box of Proactive Acne Remover to a bicycle, so when I see that I have a few packages to deliver on one walking route, I have to decide if I can carry the boxes or if it would be quicker to drive my truck to the house and drop them off.

On one of my final walks today, I had four boxes to deliver and decided it would be quicker to drop them off at each house since they were collectively all too large to fit into my Post Office Satchel. When I first started at the Post Office, I always knocked when I dropped off a package just to let the people know. Then, one day, I knocked, a guy opened his door and his poodle jumped up and bit my crotch. Now, I never knock. If the package gets stolen, I hope they have insurance. Honestly, though, I don’t care. I’d rather save the package between my legs than the package on your porch.

After dropping off the four boxes, I drove the truck to the starting point of this walk, gathered up the mail and began delivering it. When I came to the ninth house on this walk, the package I’d left on the edge of their porch was now sitting in the middle of their yard. Sure this seemed strange, but no stranger than the time I saw a guy holding a child upside down by her legs saying, “Why don’t you pee your pants now? Then you can drink it.”

I stepped over the package, sorted the mail and stuck it in the mailbox. This is when I noticed there was really something wrong. Off to the right side of the porch, the house was covered in bloody handprints mixed with smears of blood. Now I’m a mailman, not some classically trained Crime Scene Investigator expert, but I ascertained the blood was coming from the old lady who was laying face down in the unkempt rose bushes.

A quick assessment of the situation showed me that she had bent over to pick up the package, slipped, thrown the box in the middle of the yard, and then she had fallen and could not get up. I made a mental note to place future deliveries in the center of the porch and not on the edge and then asked her the most obvious question.

“Do you need help?”

The thorns had really cut through the age spots on her hands and the blood she hadn’t rubbed off on the house was all over her body. When she said, “yes” I saw her face had several thorns poking out of it. She looked like an organic-green version of  Pinhead from Hellraiser.

Even though it goes against my number one rule, I gently reached out and knocked on the door. I hoped they did not have a dog. It took forever for someone to answer the door, finally a big guy in sweatpants opened up and said, “What do you want?”

“Grannies in the rose bushes,” I said. “Looks like she needs some help.” Then I stepped off the porch and over the package in the yard and continued with the route. I’ve noticed that when people save a life, they don’t consider themselves a hero. They say, “I was just doing my job.” Not me. My job is a mailman. But today, I was a hero.