The holiday season seems a better time for levity than politics so as I’m attempting to maintain a sense of humor with a little postal service glitch – I’m sharing my experience in hopes of sparing others the same irritation.

The glitch didn’t really come to light until last week when I inquired about a check I was expecting and at about the same time had an email from the check sender with the subject line “re-routing your mail?” And he’d kindly scanned the return envelope he’d received that day – the envelope the postal system had returned with the notice that an additional 55 cents was required to send the envelope on to its forwarding APO address in Europe.

Nice. And that kind of explained our recent light mailbox at home.

I had an immediate thought of contacting my Air Force son, who with his active duty wife, have relocated to a cush assignment in Europe – to explain those lumps of coal that were on the way to his Christmas stocking. But I curbed the impulse – he’s moved a number of times and this wasn’t the first time their mail was briefly forwarded to our address during the moves and then the change of address request for his new address.

I did, however, send him a brief email to inquire as to whether he’d included anyone else in the family on the change of address.

While at work and learning that our mail was apparently on it’s way to my son’s address, I called my husband, Eric, and suggested he visit our local post office and ask just how this little annoyance occurred.

He did just that, and when he called me back, the message he delivered was through clenched teeth.

Apparently, the very nice postal clerk he spoke with cheerfully advised him: “Oh, that happens all the time.”

And by about the same time, I had an email response from the soon-to-be disinherited son who first observed “Oh, that’s too funny,” but then advised that his change of address request to the postal service was expressly for he and his wife.

The remedy for our situation, according to the cheerful postal clerk, was to complete and submit the change of address cards for Eric and me – and we’d eventually begin receiving our mail again.

That hasn’t yet occurred with our important mail – bills, checks, Christmas cards – but the junk mail delivery was never interrupted by the glitch. We have received every advertisement, Christmas catalogue, and piece of junk that we normally receive.

My charming daughter-in-law is mailing all those additional envelopes that clogged their post office box back to us.

Unfortunately, a little ramification of this event is that we didn’t really know what we owed folks like CenterPoint Energy, or the Bossier City Utility Department – you know – that fairly short, but necessary list of services we all like to maintain without interruption. My recent experience with contacting many of these providers is that they are likely a good deal more interested in protecting the security of their customers, than was the postal service that just ships one’s mail wherever.

We’re hopeful our regular mail delivery will resume in the near future – and already one Christmas card has made it through the change of address gauntlet. It could even occur, however, that my son’s mail is also redirected this way, which would be “too funny,” but of course, “that happens all the time.”

Although that begs the question of why the postal service doesn’t fix this little irritation, Christmas season is a busy time for the postal service. Maybe they’ll get to the problem next year.

A safe and happy Christmas to all – and remember a sense of humor goes a long way to smoothing the irritation road.