phil jacobsen

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. I hate you, Tomorrow.

There is a saying at the Post Office that no matter how bad of a day you’re having, one day it will be worse. In a way this is reassuring. There are days when everything seems to go wrong—the truck gets a flat tire or you get bit by a dog. Luckily, there’s always tomorrow.

One day I slipped on some ice then tripped over a curb and landed on a package marked “Fragile.” This gift had traveled all the way from South Carolina, intact and in one piece, my fellow postal carriers had respected the red “fragile” tag on this balloon and candle wrapped box. Then I blew the handoff. Three doors down from the birthday girl’s house her glass ballerina or Tickle Me Elmo Crystal was reduced to fragments. I was tempted to write, “Open with Band-aids” on this box, instead I ripped off the stamps, pulled out a marker, and wrote “UPS.” That’s what a brown Sharpee did for me.

While this may have been that girl’s worst birthday gift from her South Carolinian aunt, this wasn’t my worst day.

I thought my worst day was when I was sitting alone in my truck, organizing the mail and passing the gas, when someone I hadn’t seen was standing at the truck door wondering if I had their check. “Even mailmen fart,” was all I could think to say. I still don’t know what this meant, but I do know this was just embarrassing and not a bad day.

This has now become such a common experience it’s no longer even embarrassing. If I’m bored at work and need to talk to someone, all I have to do is fart in my truck, and I’m guaranteed to get company. It’s like people are like dogs, but instead of responding to a silent, high-pitched whistle, they only approach when I’ve called out with a silent but deadly smell.

I’ve been caught peeing in a cup in the back of my truck and I’ve had a cat run up my leg to get away from the dog that then bit me. Once a man said he was going to kill me, and on that day I said, “Please do. It only gets worse from here.”

He let me live and today I accidentally discharged all of my pepper spray when I leaned against the seat belt buckle. I had to clean out the truck and wash my eyes and this put me behind schedule. In fact, I was so late that I had to use my headlamp to cut through the dark and to deliver the mail; I thought this was a bad day. But I tried not to complain, because I knew one day it could be worse. Twenty minutes later when my light broke, it got worse.

I wasn’t surprised that the light broke. I was staring at the mail and the bright light that was reflected off the white envelopes was all my pupils could focus on. I did not see the steps until I fell down and my head hit on the sidewalk. Actually, my head didn’t directly hit the sidewalk, the headlamp cushioned the impact by shattering like a little girl’s birthday gift on my forehead. I picked up as much of the mail as I could find, but now out of order and covered in blood, it was difficult to deliver in the dark.

So far, this was my worst day. Luckily, there’s always tomorrow.