Tenley Goes Postal

Mrs. Brown, parent of one of the kids in Tenley's class, is a "streetwalker with benefits" a.k.a. mail carrier and graciously arranged for Ten's class to visit the downtown post office for a tour.

Now since Ten's favorite part of her "Elmo Holidays" dvd is Mail Carrier Kelly, and her general fascination with letters and stamps, I figured she would be all gung ho about this- I was: I'd never seen the inside secret part of the post office, so I naturally volunteered to chaperone.

Max the Mail Man gave us our tour, and I found the whole thing really interesting. This particular post office was the first one in our town, and the building was done in 1931. They have great pictures of it being built on the wall, and it still has the old PO Boxes with the engraved numbers and brass keys. It also made it very easy for me to understand why I frequently get someone else's mail.

The kids were only marginally interested: they wanted to play with the parcels, re-sort the mail, and go for rides in the express mail bin.

We did put them on the giant freight scale (been there since 1939) in the back to see how much the class weighed and how much it would cost to ship them somewhere else.

Answer: 767 lbs. of Pre-Schooler! $563 Parcel Post to ship them to somewhere in NY.

The kids favorite part of the trip was, without a doubt, getting to play in the mail truck. They sat on the cargo lifts, re-arranged the sorting bins, pretended to drive, and honked the horn.

And despite my daughter's seeming indifference to this little outing, I have a sneaky suspicion that I will be hearing about all the wonders she saw at the post office for a long time to come.