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USPS won’t be happy but we sure will be
I’ve been living in my current apartment for well over a decade. For the first three years, my tiny mailbox was stuffed with catalogs for the guy who lived in the apartment next to me. Why? He hadn’t filed a change of address (apparently, I came to find out, to avoid the courts finding him for his child support payments). His tastes ran to trucks, boots, and men’s grooming products. Needless to say, not my tastes.
I got tired of sticking the catalogs under his door as if I was an auxiliary postal carrier. I finally left him a note to please either cancel the damn things or give them his current address. Even so, I had to call and pretend to be his wife to get some companies to cease and desist.
He and his sister finally moved. The catalogs stopped coming. But the ghost of the previous tenant of my apartment lives on: she hasn’t lived at my address for almost 20 years, but I still get direct mail for her, the latest from a company that builds outdoor spaces. Um, no, I don’t think “the Helle household” or “current resident” will be securing outdoor deck and patio services.
I just got a giant postcard for the grand opening of a new Total Wine store — one that’s a good 35 minute drive away, in DC. I live in Virginia. At…








