"Hmmmm. Why did I go to the post office?"Yep. It's not pretty, but for a brief moment I couldn't remember why I was there. So I sat in my mini-van
and concentrated really, really hard and finally it dawned on me.
"Stamps! I came to buy stamps!" And then feeling as triumphant as Hannibal when he crossed that last Alp I started the van so I could pull out of the parking
lot, but something call it instinct, call it intuition stopped me.
Something was wrong and I knew it. The questions was what? So I sat there a moment and concentrated and then Eureka! I had it. I didn't remember
receiving my stamps.
That of course doesn't mean I didn't receive them. It just means I didn't remember receiving them. So I started to get out of my car and go into the post office and ask for them. But again something
stopped me: It could be that I did get them, but don't remember it.
To put this in proper perspective, you must understand that this entire sequence from the moment I left the post office either clutching or not clutching my
stamps in my wizened and liver-spotted hands to the moment of epiphany only took about five minutes. It's not like I went to the post office, bought my stamps, then read War and Peace or had liposuction. Nope, I was still hanging
in the parking lot and could not for the life of me remember whether I actually received the stamps I just purchased.
It's pitiful that someone who once could recite her children's entire names from memory, not to mention several
different recipes for fudge, can no longer hold a thought more than a couple of seconds. But it's true. So I sat there racking my brain such as it is trying to remember whether or not I actually received my stamps and you know
what? I couldn't remember.
Then I did the only thing I could think of to do and searched my entire pocketbook and every inch of my pockets and car to see if I had them. But then I never am really sure that I've done a good enough
job searching, so I searched everything all over again. Nope, no stamps.
Feeling a bit stupid, I climbed out of my car and went back inside the post office and once again got in line. The woman at the front of the line was
purchasing you guessed it money orders of all denominations, so many I had to assume she collected the darn things. After about 15 minutes I once again worked my way to the front and told the clerk I didn't get my stamps.
She
looked at me and said, "No, you sure didn't." Then she handed them to me and I went back out to the parking lot and climbed into my mini-van, where I sat there for a moment and tried to remember what I was doing there.
Stamps! That was it! I came to buy stamps
