I've written endlessly about B.T.D. - "Bakersfield Transaction Disorder". The inability of the locals to navigate the simple transactions of every day life. But despite that, you would think there might be some tasks so simple, so mundane, that they would be immune from the disease.
But then you'd be wrong.
I'm talking about the mail.
Over the weekend I finally got my first unemployment forms, nearly a month after being laid off. I wanted to make sure they got in the mail yesterday and didn't trust our erratic local delivery person. I was running some errands and decided to just swing by the post office and use the drive-thru lane. How simple could that be?
Turns out, not very.
It would be if you could pull it off without encountering a local, but that's unlikely to happen. It certainly didn't happen yesterday. I pulled into the drive-thru, a separate curbed off lane with a row of mailboxes on the driver's side, each with a funnel like extender that brought the mail slot to within inches of the cars.
In front of me was a truck.
I had already mailed by forms and just needed the truck to finish it's business and move on. And then I saw a hand emerge from the driver's window.
Holding a box.
The box was probably 4 inches wide on it's smallest side. The mail slot is 2 inches tall. It hovered there for a moment while the driver probably sized up the dilemma. And then the driver did the Bakersfield thing. He shoved the box against the slot. Now, what, exactly, he imagined would happen is unknowable. Did he think the slot would open up, like a python unhinging it's jaws to devour his package? Did he think the package would magically shrink to slip on in? Clearly his mechanical knowledge was limited to what he'd seen in cartoons.
You'll be unsurprised to learn it didn't work. So he did the obvious thing... shoved it harder.
Again. And again. And again.
Traffic was building up behind me but everyone here is too polite to honk. I was hoping that was the end of it, that the driver would get a clue and drive on, circle back around to the post office proper and take care of his business inside.
But no.
I saw his parking lights flash as he put the truck in "park", the door opened and he ambled out with his box. He stood for a minute staring at the mailbox. He moved around the mailbox looking for a secret back door. He stood there a long moment. I thought that was it, that he'd give up.
But no.
He then got on his knees and began examining the bottom of the mailbox. Looking for what? A trapdoor? Who knows?
By now there were nearly a dozen cars behind me and five minutes had passed. For a moment I feared he'd just leave his truck parked there and head over to the post office, leaving us stranded. But head down, defeated, he finally climbed back into the cab and drove off.
Such is life in Bako.
And to think, people wonder why I never leave the house.
