  Mr. Mumbles There are two post offices that I use on a regular basis. One is the post office where our PO Box is located, the other is the post office nearer to my house and more convenient if I'm doing other errands like grocery shopping or stopping at the drug store while I'm out. Yesterday I took two large bins of mail to the post office, and I got Mr. Mumbles. Mr. Mumbles gives me the creeps, but he was my only option. If I have a single package or a quick interaction with Mr. Mumbles I'm fine, but the longer I have to hang out at his station, the more uneasy I am. As you might guess, Mr. Mumbles mumbles. It's as if his running internal dialog comes spilling out of his mouth if he has to open it to talk to a customer.
Each and every action he makes is accompanied by an indistinct commentary, reminding me a little of Billy Bob Thornton's character in urlLink Sling Blade . The mumbling usually sounds something like, "Ah, well, let's see, got a book in here, yessir, going to Mississippi Canada? Oh, Mississauga. Yep, that'll need one of these green fellas here, I see you've got that filled out, that's good, one pound six ounces, air mail on that one [stamp stamp]. Here we go. Another book, zip code 55739. Media mail, we'll move that bugger over here..." When I have something like 30 packages to process, it means a loooong running commentary, most of it not directed at me.
When a comment is directed at me, his tone and inflection don't seem to change at all, just mumblemumblemumbleDoYouWantAConfirmationWithThatmumblemumblemumble. It's unnerving. Not nearly as unnerving as when he tries to make chitchat, though, which is what happened this time! Because I was sending packages to Canada, I was treated to a nice little diatribe about how "the Canadians are the worst.
" I wasn't sure what he was getting at, and responded with a neutral "Oh? " He let loose with a rant about how the Canadians don't allow guns up there, and so an American tourist was killed outside a bar for $100, and the Canadians just shrugged it off like it was no big deal. (How these things are related, he never made clear. ) He goes up to the Okanagan with his buddy and they're all killing each other with knoves and baseball bats. Now I was definitely not going to mention that I'd lived in Vancouver for 4 years and saw no such thing, but I did say, "Huh.
I thought the Canadians were generally peace-loving sorts. " This led to a further rant about how they're not only up there killing each other with baseball bats, but now that they have "all their free pot" it'll only get worse. He then told me, in the most clear-spoken manner I've ever heard him use, that the Chinese are the only ones who know how to deal with drugs: kill the drug dealers along with the addicts!
Ha ha! That'll take care of it! I nervously told him that the book I was mailing to the guy in the military (somewhere in the middle east) was a book about the Old Testament, took my receipt and scurried away. This fellow is a walking sterotype of the kind of guy you'd expect to "go postal" and start shooting up the place when he finally snaps. ::shudder:: 
