Mailman Jack

Jack was riding his bicycle in the street near his home. The street is usually busy, even in the early morning but he rarely hears any horns or angry drivers yelling at each other. Everybody drives safely and happily.

Jack is on his way to the post office where he works, he hopes he won't have to deliver a lot of high priority or urgent mail today, because it is colder than usual and he only has his old bike as the means to deliver the mail around the small town.

He arrives to his office on time, only to find that only the building's guard who is responsible of unlocking its main entrance in the morning is there. His other colleagues are late which is as unusual as the cold weather of today.

Normal mail can wait for tomorrow he thinks with the image of Larry, his manager, on his mind. Searching through the pile of mail on his desk, which was put by Larry the day before, he hopes he won't have any urgent mail which must be delivered today even if it's so cold that his colleagues, even Sally who is never late, is today.

Larry's job is to assign the mail, and make sure everything runs smoothly in this small but busy post office. He splits the big pile of mail that the mail office receives and puts a smaller pile on each mailman's desk as to assign the pile to the mailman who sits at that desk. Larry doesn't really go through the big pile of mail, he just randomly splits them into piles that only look equal in size.

Jack finds three urgent mails today to three different parts of town. He was shocked on this unlucky cold day as he usually gets only one urgent mail, if any at all. He is let down, and wonders what's in Sally's pile on his left, and Robert's pile on his right.

He thinks that coming late to the office is a kind of cheating, as being lazy and not on time is not as much hard work as waking up early to be sure to be on time. At least that is what it looks like. He thinks that maybe because he didn't take advantage of the weather to cheat today and stay in his warm bed for an extra hour until it's at least a tiny bit warmer, he can reward himself by sneaking the three urgent mail letters into the piles of colleagues.

He is surprised that he's capable of thinking of such dishonest ways, especially considering the fact that he never cheated, at least not since he graduated from high school. A passing thought of whether his body and mind are having difficulty handling the pains and even the joys that life brings, comes to his mind. But distributing the letter piles is just a matter of luck, and who decides luck? No one does, because no one can! So even if he puts the urgent mail into his colleagues’ piles, he wouldn't be changing anyone's luck at all.

Finally he convinced himself to put one urgent letter in Sally’s pile and another in Robert’s pile. He returned back to his desk, walking heavily with guilt of selfishness that he feels have stained his pure heart. He sat down holding the last urgent letter in his shaky hands on his rotating chair turned back to the desks at the back where he contemplated putting the last letter on one of the piles there. He was thinking of the embarrassment that he’ll get if he was caught sneaking letters into other people’s work piles.

Jack was holding the last urgent letter when Sally entered the office. She was whiter than usual because of the cold. She uttered ‘brrrr’ when she entered, alluding to the cold and said ‘Good morning’. Jack was still on his chair hesitant when she entered to his surprise so he quickly turned his face and put the letter on his pile responding with a faint and weak ‘good morning’. He knew that the thought of cheating made him weak and confused, almost like an intoxicated person. Sally attributed those observation to the cold.

…continued: http://storyunicorn.blogspot.ae/2014/03/mailman-jack-2.html...