SoCS – Some Things Don’t ‘ad’ Up

Even in the midst of the craziness that is NaNoWriMo, Linda still finds time to drop in and leave us a prompt for our Saturday ritual of stream of consciousness writing. This should be easy considering I am writing my entire Nano novel in that style. Linda has upped the ante with this prompt this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “flyer/ad.” Look at the latest ad you got in the mail (if it’s a store flyer, choose the product right in the middle of the page) or choose the next online ad you find, and theme your post on whatever the product is. Do not name the brand if you hate it, unless you add that it’s an opinion/review of the product in question. You don’t want to chance getting sued. Have fun!

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We went to our friends’ family art show/sale this evening.  We picked up the mail when we came home which is later than normal. As I looked through the mail, I saw only one ad. For the U.S. Postal Service. I guess competition this time of year is tough.

It’s funny because I just mailed three LEGO advent calendars to three of our grandchildren. The cost to mail them was the equivalent of the cost of one of the advent calendars.

I remember when the post office did not need to advertise. They were about the only option available to we ‘common folk’. The mail carriers were important to life and communication. We always knew our mail carriers by name.

Both my parents were mail carriers when we lived in Ohio. Everyone knew them, too. My dad had a truck route and my mom had a foot route. Sometimes my dad worked on the weekend doing collection service from the mailboxes around town. Remember how easy mailboxes were to find? There was one on almost every major corner and store. This reminds me I once mistook a mailbox for my boyfriend. I will write that story some day!

Did you know the phrase “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” is NOT the official motto of the U.S. postal service? That phrase was extracted from translated works of Herodotus and was written about the Persian couriers in 500 BC.

So now the post office needs to advertise. I wonder if the hiked postage rates go toward advertising? Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

Some of the best advertising about the post office had to come from the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”. Here’s the clip.

We will watch this movie, probably sometime Thanksgiving weekend. Which reminds me about one more thing about the post office. I will also spend that first week of December writing out and mailing Christmas cards. Yes, I know. It is expensive and no one sends them much anymore. Well, maybe nobody but me.

And of course I bought holiday stamps, too. They were advertised on the bulletin board in the post office. It was an impulse buy when I mailed those packages!

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If you would be interested in joining in this writing challenge, spend some time reading the comments (where everyone leaves links to their weekly SOCS post) over at Linda’s blog. Then read the rules I n her post and give it a whirl.