It's the small joys in life.

If you know anything at all about me, you know that I enjoy irony in every sense of the word. Usually, I enjoy irony if it means something is funny.

For instance, I have an aunt who is a staunch vegetarian. My mother chewed her out for pushing vegetarianism on my brother and me when we were smaller. All our lives she has been a vegetarian. So, then, a few years back in the beginning of October, my brother's birthday to be specific, he received a package in the mail. It was a very large, unmarked white styrofoam carton. We were both caught by surprise, as neither of us could remember having ordered anything over the internet or otherwise that could possibly fit in a very large white unmarked styrofoam carton. Feeling brave, we opened it to find that it was from a company called the Omaha Steak something or other. They specialize in very delicious meat products. This bit of information startled us a little bit, mostly because our grandmother on our father's side ordered from this company a lot, and she had just passed less than a month previous.

Was this steak from beyond the grave? Did our grandmother gain supernatural steak-ordering capabilities? Is this, in fact, the lamest post-mortem supernatural power anyone could possibly hope to possess?


However, having inspected the invoice, we still had no inclination as to who sent it to us. Eventually, we found a short birthday greeting on one of the pamphlets. It read something along these lines: "Happy birthday, Nicholas - enjoy the hamburgers and filets! Love, your Aunt _______."

We had a good laugh about that.





This is why I was particularly delighted by a piece of mail I received today. It was a coupon card from the auto shop that had just serviced my car, saying "Thanks for your business." It was ripped very jaggedly pretty much right down the middle of it.

It was stuffed in my mailbox inside of a large, clear plastic bag with the U.S. Postal Service logo on it, bearing a big greeting that read, "We Care."


After that, I inspected another piece of mail I ultimately determined to be junk mail, ripped it in half, and said, "I care."