They are sticking it to us at the PO these days.

They are sticking it to us in the best sense of the word.  We are going through our paces big time during the early part of this Christmas season.

Lots of packages, lots of mail…lots of packages coming from different places at different times.

If we don’t spend at least part of the morning waiting for late mail to arrive from somewhere (the cryptic “somewhere”), it’s unusual.

I go in at 7:30 to start the day…and finish up around 5:30 or 6:00.

It’s a busy time.

But I know that I could be busting rocks in a South African prison or something like that, so I know I have it pretty good.

I have a good thing going…nobody yelling at me or getting on my case is a good thing.

I’ve been listening to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” as I drive around.

I’ve read that book a couple of times…but I must have listened to the audio version close to 10 so far.

I’ve mostly been listening to it to see if I could decipher some of the latter parts.

Some of it is kind of dense…impenetrable (to me).  I use the excuse that if I didn’t have to concentrate so hard on the mail I was delivering that I’d catch more of what he was talking about. That’s a good excuse….I can blame my job.  That works well for me.

The whole book is a discourse on “quality” and what that word means…but in the latter part of the book it gets really philosophical and he kind of loses me.

I do listen to every word,though…just like a good monkey waiting for the light to come on so I can press the button and get another treat.

I listen like something is going to click and it will make sense.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that a mind game I could play while I’m delivering all this mail is to tell myself that I’d been given a grand scholarship to a rolling, hidden university.

My mail Jeep is my classroom and the paycheck I get every other week is what they’re paying me to learn all this great stuff.

I don’t think the NRLCA union would back me up on that if it ever came to light, so my disclaimer at this point would be that my primary and only directive is to seek what is best for the USPS and my community of eager mail recipients.

I know in my head that I’m a real “learning fool”, though. I’m a fool for the learnin’.

Big time.

So…thankyou, America, for funding my education.  They should put me on a public service TV spot…smiling blithely as I deliver another huge package, some philosophically challenging audio book playing loudly in the background.

I think the country could really get behind a “learnin’ fool” mailman.

The slogan could be something like, “Save the USPS!  Save Peter’s education!!”.

It really isn’t all about meeeeeee….but a good bit of it really is.  I’m, unfortunately, for better or worse, the hub of my own universe.

This whole scholarship thing is a spin that might just carry me through this busy time.

Now if I can just avoid being late to class.