phil jacobsen

Kids

The kids asked if I had some candy. I let them know I was a stranger, and they shouldn’t ask for candy from me. They said that I wasn’t a stranger, because I was their mailman, so they asked for candy again. I wasn’t their mailman; I’m not anyone’s mailman; I’m everyone’s mailman.

Every day I deliver a different route, if these kids were strangers to me, then I was a stranger to them and the first rule of thumb in preventing kids from being abducted or molested is #1: Don’t take candy from strangers.

If their mothers hadn’t taught them this lesson, then I figured I should. So I explained to the kids that since I wasn’t their regular mailman I didn’t have any candy. However, tomorrow, I knew their regular mailman would be working and at the office we called him, “Willie Wonka.” He carries more candy than Mr. Hershey and Mr. Goodbar combined. If, I said to them, they could wait until tomorrow, they would get more candy from their mailman than they could collect in five days worth of Halloweens.

Three houses later, I forgot about these kids.

Two months later, I returned back to this office where I was welcomed by one of the mailmen as, “Are you the mother fucker who told the kids I was Willie Wonka?”

Kids just don’t appreciate sarcasm.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I was walking back to my truck and a different group of kids came up to me and asked if I had delivered any packages to their house. Where do you live, I asked them? They said they lived in the last house on the right hand side of the street. This is the house where the sidewalk was covered in snow, even though the last storm was days ago. This is the same house where I knew I’d delivered plenty of past due notices for phone bills, electricity and a cancellation notice from Playboy Magazine.

The chances that these kids were going to get more than an orange and/or a used doll from Goodwill for Christmas was more likely than them actually being delivered a package or gift in the mail. I figured their life was one full of disappointment with little more than poverty and drugs in their future. I knew I could change all that if even for a brief moment in their life.

Yes, I said to these kids, the last house on the right I left two boxes from Toys R Us and another smaller box from Nintendo, I think that one said, ‘Weeeee!”

And that’s exactly how these kids left me, running down the street happy and excited yelling, “Weee!” It was a long block, and for a few minutes in their life, I saw true happiness. That moment of running had to have been more exciting than their future disappointing Christmas morning.

I returned to this office today to deliver mail. I’d forgotten about the joy I’d put on those kids faces that day in December. But, today, their regular mailman asked if I was that mother fucker who told those crying kids they had gifts from Toys R Us.

Yeah, that was me. But I knew I would make it all better. Today I told those kids that tomorrow they will get lots of candy.