Juxtapose

For the benefit of all ye who do not talk to me on at least a semi-daily basis, I'll give you some background to my story-to-come.

About a year ago, when I was just beginning school, I was outside one day studying homework or somesuch on our little bench in the front yard, right in front of one of our large windows on the front of the house. Not seven feet away from me was our mailbox. I needed something inside (exactly what I needed eludes me at the moment), and so I went inside and got whatever-it-was. As I proceeded to walk towards the garage door to get back to my studying outside, I stopped at the window and saw a new mailman, the likes of which I have never seen before. The sideburns, the slicked down black 50's hair, the horn-rimmed glasses, the lovable chubbiness, o the glory! I was instantly smitten. If I had never had a thing for mailmen (which, consequently, I never had), I had at thing for them (at least *my* mailman) then. All summer my mailman would bring many interesting things to my mailbox, and I would see him drive by in his little mailtruck. I simply couldn't bring myself to talk to him, though, even just to go out to get the mail. My parents egged me on, my brothers teased incessantly, my sister thought I was odd. But I stood by my mailman, who, by this point, had a name - the Buddy Holly Mailman. He was common conversation in my house, almost as if we all actually knew this poor mailman and I wasn't just a desperate stalker-groupie-fan of a United States Postal Service employee. I know, I AM that eccentric of a person. Somewhere around the beginning of August, I no longer saw Buddy Holly come to my mailbox daily any longer. I assumed that his summer tenure was over, and I was doomed to never glace out my window to see his familiar face any longer. Our previous, far less Buddy-Holly-ish, red-haired forty-something mailman resumed his route and took Buddy Holly's place. I gave up, and, for the most part, Buddy was a remnant of the past, whose presence was only to be discussed amidst sighs and murmurs of memories of good times long ago. Such is life. All was fairly quiet on the (Eastern) front until...

or so ago, I caught up with my friend Katie. We talked about things going on, about her work-study and field-placement jobs for school, about the idiocy of men going into nursing purely for the sake of picking up chicks... and then, I had a thought. This is a rare occurence, so I took note and acted on it. I remembered that for the past summer, Katie had worked for the USPS in town, sorting mail. The summer went by so fast, and both of us were so busy that never once did I think or even get a chance to ask her how her job was going or tell her that I needed her to find my Buddy Holly Mailman. I hadn't even TOLD her that I had a Buddy Holly Mailman. Then it hit me. As we talked on the phone, I asked,

"Do you have a carrier that works there and has glasses? Kinda young?"

She said, "Oh! yes! Steve. Yeah. He works there. This one old guy at work calls him 'The Kid' because his father used to work for the USPS, and besides, he's the youngest carrier there."

Me, nonchalantly: "Oh. Yeah, he used to deliver mail to my house. He's cool."

(and here's the good part)

Katie says, "Well, yeah, most of us call him Buddy Holly, because if you take him out of that uniform, get him out of that little white truck.. he's just the perfect 50's guy. He hurt his back over the summer and will be back as a carrier sometime within the next month."

Ah. Bliss. And slow-crawling smiles across my face.

I'm such a freak.