You've Got Mail

Now that letters are rare to come by, and there’s little or no sense of anticipation of arrival of letters from friends and relatives, letter boxes have become redundant save the occasional subscription, and the household bills.

With fewer people reading books, subscriptions stand even lesser chance of being read. But if there’s one thing why we return to letter boxes, time and again it is for the various bills: Electricity bills, Telephone bills, Maintenance bills, Internet bills, and Cable TV bills among other things. More so if you don’t use the Internet to pay these off, and most people don’t. So a check of the letterbox for incoming mail becomes necessary.

I do it.

I wouldn’t mind as much if the bills landed on a pattern, but they don’t. It is quite common to have electricity bills land a day or two before the last date, or worse still not at all. Unless you check the letter box daily chances are you’ll miss the bills, and heaven forbid if you’ve make it to the Government department to rectify the missed deadlines, worse still disconnections.

It is common to check the letterbox for mail one day and not check it for the next five, maybe even ten, only to be surprised by their arrival when you least expect them. I believe in Murphy ’s Law, and suspect that bills land in the letterbox the day after I’ve checked them.

And I wonder

Why I cannot be notified automatically no sooner a letter or a bill or something is slipped into the letterbox. Surely if there’s a chip programmed with my mobile number it should be able to send me a SMS no sooner a circuit is broken on paper being slipped into the letterbox. Better still if a sensor were to detect the same so that even if a circuit stays 'broken' the sensor will still detect mail slipped in. Add a reminder if the mail is not picked up in a certain timeframe.

Ah, the conveniences folks desire! Like someone once said, if wishes were horses . . . Ahem.


Unless ofcourse no letter or bill mattered! What a blessed life that would be, without bills that is.

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