My Twilight Zone Moment

Here's a strange but true story to kill off the month of June. Only a few people have heard the details of what I'm about to blather on here about, so consider yourself privileged.

Back in the early 80's I was working as a letter carrier for the Canada Post Corporation. I'm somewhere in that group photo above. As a rookie on the job, I did not yet have a route of my own to deliver. My purpose in their grand scheme of things, was to replace any carrier that decided, because of sickness or injury or direction of the wind, that he/she was unable to perform his/her duties that day. While this made for a few stressful mornings (learning someone else's sortation case) it also widened my knowledge of the city and never allowed me to get totally bored with any one gig.

NOWadays, carriers are not required to return to the postal station at a certain time for a lunch break. They are allowed to keep delivering the mail until the bag's empty and the job's done. But such was not the norm in the old days. As was expected of me, I would return to our base of operations around the noon hour after completing the morning half of my rounds.

On this one particular day, I decided to spend the lunch period out in my car, listening to the radio. A phone-in talk show on 'the giant' CKNW. This is where things started getting weird but I didn't know it yet. A female caller was on the air complaining about the post office. She was annoyed because she'd now been waiting 3 weeks for a letter from her sister in Saskatchewan. (In the good ol' days before emails.) Since her comments had nothing to do with the current discussion, the host of the show told her she was 'off topic' and swiftly cut her off. It was mildly entertaining (because of the postal connection) but I quickly dismissed it.


Soon after, I was out on the beat again completing the PM portion of my route which began on Ashwood Drive. I had a satchel full of mail and it was a bright spring day on a quiet street. I'd only completed delivery to the first six homes of the first block before I encountered a woman standing alone outside the front door of the seventh house. She was obviously the home owner and as I approached her, she spoke thusly: "I've been waiting three weeks for a letter from my sister in Saskatchewan."

Well. I mean. There was a sudden shiver running up the back of my neck. Even more strange, it felt like my eyes were starting to water. Not because of any poor misplaced letter from Saskatchewan, but because... this was the lady... I'd just heard this very same woman on my car radio less than 20 minutes earlier. Voicing the exact same lament. In fact, I didn't hesitate to tell her of this coincidence. I said: "I just heard you on the radio less than 20 minutes ago."

Now... had I stopped at that point to put myself in HER shoes - to try and appreciate the moment from HER side - I'd probably have seen that it wasn't exactly the same bizarre oddity that it was for me. Tens of thousands of people probably heard her yaking on the radio that day; it wouldn't surprise her to learn that I was just another one of many. But for ME, the situation had a certain Twilight Zone feel to it. For me, there were more darts that had to hit the bullseye before the situation I now found myself in could take place. (I'd like to know what the odds were, and why can't I ever win at the lottery instead?)

To answer your burning question - no, I did NOT have the famous missing letter from the sister in Saskatchewan to give to the woman that day (it was probably never mailed in the first place) and I could tell that the whole incident had not made much of a dent on her at all. It was just another frustrating hour in her frustrating life. But for me, it dominated my thoughts for the rest of the day. I can only assume that I finished the route without making any major mistakes and that I somehow returned safely to the postal station later that afternoon.