“It’s A Girl!”
We often still get mail for the previous residents of our flat. We usually just stick it between the gate and the wall next to the mailbox and the postal worker takes it back. We’re pretty familiar with the names of previous residents, though occasionally, there is some junk mail for a name we don’t recognize, probably a long-lost resident of yesteryear.
Yesterday, we received a card AND a package for the same person, this time for a totally different name. What was strange is that we have (a) never received mail for this name before, (b) we have lived here for what? six months now? and are getting mail for a new person, (c) they were a package, and a personal greeting card, both handwritten, (d) they were from two different people.
I mean, the odds of someone sending a package to the wrong address, after we’ve been here for six months AND it’s not Christmas - isn’t that kind of weird? I wrote, “not at this address - return to sender” on both pieces and put them back out for the postal worker. They were picked up no problem.
Then, this afternoon, I saw a man in a minivan pull up into our driveway. Wondering who it was and why he was here, I watched, as he checked something on a clipboard, and then as he got out and walked around to the other side of the van to open the sliding door. He then proceeded to pull out this GINORMOUS balloon bouquet, with balloons reading, “Congratulations!” and “Get Well!” and “It’s A Girl!”
I knew it wasn’t for us - cause I have NOT just given birth - and I knew it wasn’t for our upstairs neighbor either. He saw me from the window and smiled and waved. I opened the window to say hello and asked him who it was for, and he gave me our address. I shook my head and said I didn’t think so, and then he recited and spelled out the same name of the person we got mail for yesterday! I told him no one by that name lived at this address, and he repeated it. I told him we got some mail for that person by mistake recently, but that it was the wrong address.
He looked very confused, but he dutifully got in his van and retreated to a parking spot on the street, where he pulled out a cell phone to double check. I saw him check his clipboard, then our house number, and look up at our windows again, and I’m sure he was wondering what was going on.
Yeah, me too. Someone gave out the wrong address. This is going to be, albeit a minor headache, a pain nonetheless. Maybe I should just start keeping the (obviously) baby gifts? I could use me some Target gift cards…
January 17th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Congratulations
January 17th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
You’re hilarious.
That is seriously odd.
January 17th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Too funny. Yea, headache for sure, but a great story.
When I was in college, I kept receiving phone calls for “Balloons by Judy Lee” and “Judy Lee’s Dance Studio.” I mean we’re talking several calls a week for months! I kept thinking to myself, “man!, this woman is loosing a lot of business!” At the time, I worked at an insurance company and one day the receptionist asked me to sit at the front desk during her lunch break. As I was sitting there, this woman came in to pay her insurance bills. As she handed me the check, I glanced down at her name, “Judy Lee so-and-so.” No freaking way!! I asked her about the calls I’d been receiving at home, and if that was her, and she said it was! Then she says, “Once a year or so, I get a call from John - next time he calls, tell him I don’t want to talk to him!” crazy.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
i still have my dallas phone number, and when i was first in college, people kept calling and insisting doggedly that i was a roofing company, and to give them an estimate on their house, and they were really mad that i kept denying that i was roofing company, and how could they have called california when they had dialed a 214 area code? it was funny, because i had to be like “i swear to you i am not a roofer” and they were like “i’m thinking you are…”
what a weird situation for you!
January 19th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
remember everyone calling our house in houston looking for chili’s?
craziness. hopefully this will get figured out.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I am so tired of writing “not at this address” after living at this house for over 5 years. Why?