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Joe, The Time Traveling History Enhancing Postman

3 min readJul 26, 2024

By Edger Ai Bington

So picture this: there’s this mailman, right? His name’s Joe, and let me tell you, he’s not exactly winning any “Employee of the Month” awards. The guy’s a walking disaster — always tripping over his own feet, delivering stuff to the wrong houses, you name it, he does it wrong, you get the picture.

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One day, Sloppy Joe’s sorting through packages at the post office, and he comes across this weird-looking box. No return address, and get this — it’s addressed to “The Future.” I know, right? Anyway, Joe being Joe, he fumbles with it and accidentally opens it up. Inside is this crazy gizmo that looks like a toaster had a baby with a disco ball.

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And here’s where it gets good. Joe, bless his heart, sees a big red button on this thing and of course he pushes it. Next thing you know, POOF! He’s standing in the middle of some medieval town square, still holding his mailbag like a complete doofus.

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But Good Old Joe, he’s dedicated, I’ll give him that. He pulls out the first letter in his bag, and it’s for some “Lady Guinevere” at Camelot Castle. So off he goes, dodging knights and almost getting clobbered in a jousting tournament. When he finally delivers the letter, turns out it’s a love note from Sir Lancelot that got lost in the mail. Talk about slow delivery, hey, it’s the postal service, am I right?

Anyway, this kicks off a whole series of Joe popping up in different time periods. He’s folding paper airplanes with cavemen, delivering packages in ancient Egypt, and even dropping off mail on the moon! Can you imagine the postage costs on that one?

But here’s the thing — everywhere Joe goes, he’s accidentally making things better. He gives F. Scott Fitzgerald a pep talk that gets him to finish “The Great Gatsby.” He inspires Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” routine. It’s like he’s some kind of clumsy guardian angel for history’s greatest hits.

And you know what? Joe starts to realize something pretty cool. No matter where or when he ends up, people are basically the same. They all want to laugh, to love, to connect. And sometimes, all it takes is a letter or a package to make that happen.

By the time Joe makes it back to our time, he’s a changed man. Sure, he’s still tripping over everything in sight, but now he knows that every letter, every package, could be the start of something amazing. He’s not just delivering mail anymore — he’s delivering possibilities.

So next time you see your mail carrier, give ’em a smile and a wave, would ya? For all you know, they might just be a time-traveling hero, spreading joy throughout history one misdelivered package at a time. What‘s he delivering to your house? Yea, think about that!

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