No Pity for Exurb Mailbox Experiences

On Saturday, as I sat on the front porch of my Nairobi house numbered home, I greeted my neighbourhood mailman.

With a smile and a stack of bills, he climbed the stairs to my stoop and we had a moment of laughter around mail mis-sent to my place instead of forwarded to the previous owners. This little moment is one of the many reasons I love me some Petworth.

And the convenience of home mail delivery is yet another reason why I wonder about the mental capacity of folks who move way out to random suburbia. Take this weekend’s WashPost article “You’ve Got Mail . . . a Block Away” with the choice quote:

“This house is our dream. It’s got everything — all the bells and whistles,” Hamilton said. But, he added, “you deserve to have a nice mailbox in front of your house. I don’t think that those cluster boxes are pleasing to the eye.”

Sitting on her front porch, staring ruefully at her freshly planted garden of shrubs and flowers, Hall said she did not find out that the subdivision would have only communal mail delivery until after she moved into her $525,000 home.

And I can’t take a moment to mourn either people. They are the ones who moved out to the edge of existence, trading sensible population density for exurb sprawl. They are the ones who think new subdivisions sprouting up in farmland, serviced by long drives in SUV’s, are a good thing.

To the city-dwelling rest of us, this photograph from the article perfectly captures our feelings on the matter: let them walk!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Married, mortgaged, and soon to be a father, Wayan Vota is in the fast lane to mid-life respectability – until the day his brood finds his intimate journal of global traveling and curses him with the ever-eternal reply “I’m gonna be just like you, Dad!”

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