Purse Ho
Please indulge me for a few moments as I begin this column with an old family story.
Long ago, it was discovered that a branch of the family came from a wealthy industrialist in the European city of Prague. Sending at the end of the 20th century, a young man from the American side went to visit his cousin in the old country.
They were having a great time and decided to visit the estate. The mansion was impressive and filled with antiques, including medieval armor with helmets, chain mail and swords. As the day wore on, the cousins ​​drank in some local wormwood and vodka.
At one point they put on the armor, but the American cousin was too tall for him to fit properly. They then wandered outside for a walk in the nearby hills where, shortly after, two brown bears suddenly alighted on them. The American tried in vain to escape. The other bear has given up playing with the armored cousin.
A little while later the two bears met and one of them said, “What’s wrong with you? I had my dinner.
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The other bear says, “What can I say. Czech is in the mail!
At this point, I would normally say I’m going to show myself, but I still have a few inches of column left.
“The check is in the mail” is an old excuse, punchline, meme, trope, or cliché. Of course, paying by check is becoming less and less common in our digital age, but I remembered the phrase when a neighbor recently commented that two checks sent to local businesses had not cleared after a longer delay. long than normal.
I suggested that it was possible that they were stolen, as he left them in his curbside mailbox. I recounted an incident that happened to me a few years ago. I put two checks to the tax authorities in the mailbox early one morning and left for a gym class. Returning after a few hours, I noticed the letterbox door was open and the flag was still up. A glance showed nothing in the box. It also seemed strange to me that the mail delivery for my street at the time was in the early afternoon.
The call to the local post office revealed that no changes had been made to the delivery schedule and the most likely explanation was theft. A flurry of activity followed to change the checking account number and hand deliveries to tax offices.
This thief was clever, as long as the old checks were sent to the respective addresses, but he was also, to my good fortune, botched in carrying out the heist. Mail thieves are on the lookout, especially at tax time and when certain checks are delivered.
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If you have to send checks in the mail, taking them to the post office would be the safest bet.
So this column, instead of being just a trivial story, is a public service. No need to say thanks, but if you want to send me a check, you know what to do.
John Eubanks is an author, former teacher and actor who lives at Converse. He can be contacted at [email protected]