Delivering mail in a small town

Now that I've spent a day finally getting my county fair fix for the year (thank you to MM, who has far exceeded her county fair tolerance for the year, but was willing to endure a little more so I could enjoy the pork I helped with and check out the livestock), I feel a little more like talking about my day yesterday.

Not that it was necessarily that bad, although the lack of a full complement at the post office due to vacations and days off - compounded by me dropping a bunch of mail in the middle of the street and having to re-order it all - made it a little stressful; rather, it was just sort of surreal.

There are a lot of times when, while delivering mail, I'll see something fairly bizarre. Volunteer corn growing out of the rain gutters on people's roofs, for example, or just some of the things people leave out on their porches... But usually my role is just that of an observer, not someone involved in "the action." Yesterday, though, I was walking up to someone's mailbox when their crazy nutjob dog came tearing around the corner of the house, bearing down on me. I started waving that customer's mail around in the dog's face to keep its snapping jaws away from me, and I guess I must have yelled a little bit because the lady who lives in the house came out to see what was going on. As soon as she stepped out onto her porch, she shouted something and went sprinting into her house. The next thing I knew, she was running back out, firing probably eight or ten paintballs at the dog! I don't know if any of them hit the dog, but she was a good enough shot that he ran away (and I wasn't hit).

I was fairly steamed about the whole thing immediately afterward, mainly because this dog is an ongoing problem for me. By the time I told MM about it over the phone while she was on her way back from yet another fair, though, I could hardly stop laughing long enough to get the story out.

I guess I should just be thankful that I normally don't need to go inside people's houses for this job. When I used to appraise houses for the county assessor's office in the last town we lived in, I got to see the full glory of small-town freakiness (including, but not limited to, topless vacuuming). So, there's a "glass half-full" way of looking at things somewhere in there after all!