Wrestling with the mailbox

...not to be confused with wrestling with the angel.

No, just: my building was built in the late 1920's, which in itself is a plus in many ways. Bigger and more aesthetically pleasing rooms, solid-er walls and so on, and, surprisingly enough, better plumbing (mostly) than you tend to get in the more recently constructed places. Unfortunately, it's not kept up as well as it could be, and there are some aspects that could definitely use an update.

To wit: the aforementioned mailboxes. Are about the height, width, and depth of three DVD's. And I, like most of us in this our modern woild, get a shitload of junk mail*. Which means that nearly every day, I'm struggling for a good five minutes, sometimes longer, to wrest out a bunch of crap that I'm just going to pitch immediately into the trash anyway, often cutting my hand in the process. (The mailperson thoughtfully tucks the bulkier pieces in behind the little jutting pieces of metal along the sides, just in case they might try to escape). It's just another one of those drip-drip-drip torments that would hardly be worth noticing once, or twice. But every day...

(*did they not have as much mail back in the day? Maybe they only had small, thin envelopes to contend with--no, wait, at least the Sears Catalogue must have been a stretch. maybe everyone was just really, really tiny. less protein and all. yeah, that must be it).

Anyway I know I'm not alone in feeling this way, and possibly not even the most insane about it, prone though I unfortunately am to loud and unneighborly cursing. In similar vein, the trash receptacles are roughly the size of a box of Tic-Tacs. Which, unless you remember to use about 30 separate baggies, means a reprise of the mailbox struggle, only this time with nasty, smelly old food. The trash room is also the recycling room, and for months, there was a small feud going on in my floor's room, all through notes. Like so:

NEIGHBOR ONE: "This room is for recycling only. Please don't leave food or other smelly trash in here. It brings vermin. Throw it down the chute. Thank you."

(note is torn down, then replaced, written in caps, darker ink, and with multiple underscores, and pasted in two other places).

NEIGHBOR TWO: "if u want us to throw it away than build a bigger chute."

(some days pass, then:)

NEIGHBOR ONE (or possibly NEIGHBOR 1A): "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PEOPLE. PLEASE. BE ADULTS. IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT, IS IT?! MUST EVERYONE ELSE PICK UP YOUR MESS??"

SUPER: (Reminder about the room being for recycling only, with an addendum that anything left there would be thrown away).

NEIGHBOR TWO: (in poison-green ink): "nobody asked you to mess with it, that was suppose to be left there. stop playing with everyone's trash you filthy animal :-) "

***

I wonder how the hell people managed to keep from killing each other before indoor plumbing.

"YOU SEVEN-BY-NINE B'HOYS! YOU MAKE THESE DIGGINGS INTO A DOGGERY!"

"PSHAW, YOU HIGHFALUTIN BLUENOSE, NO NEED TO GET SO ALL-FIRED WRATHY. IT AIN'T YOUR FUNERAL NOHOW."

"STOP EMPTYING YOUR CHAMBER POT ONTO MY HUSBAND! LAST TIME YOU RUINED HIS BEST INEXPRESSIBLES!"

"AH, SHUT PAN, YOUR OLD MAN'S A LICK-SPITTLE, AND HE HAS THE FRENCH POX. :-)"