A funny thing happened on the way to the post office

It started out as a simple task: mail a package at the post office for Lauralee. It kind of ended up like a Seinfeld episode.

I have been working at my new job in Midvale for about 3 months and I'm still not very familiar with this area of the valley. I Internet searched for a post office near my work so I could go on my lunch break. There was one close by: 35 Center Street, Midvale. I briefly glanced at the accompanying map and saw that Center Street is right off of State Street, which is right near where I work. "That'll be easy enough to find," I thought to myself.

At lunch I drove towards where I thought I remembered Center Street being. I drove and drove and drove. "Hmm," I thought to myself after awhile, "I'm in Sandy now." Midvale had come and gone, and I never saw a Center Street. So I needed to turn around but couldn't, because there is a chasm so large in the turn lane on State Street that I'm pretty sure they've been filming Journey to the Center of the Earth there.

After my massive detour just to reverse directions, I drove north on State Street, past my original starting point, thinking that maybe I had read the map wrong and gone the wrong direction. I drove and drove. Past Hooters. Past Night Flight Comics. Past Dr. Johns Novelties and Lingerie. Past "Get Some" Guns and Ammo. Past Christian Ministries Gift Store. "Uh-oh," I thought, after I'd passed my 23rd car dealership, "I'm in Murray." The only place for me to turn around now was in a car lot, where I was accosted by salesmen. I managed to run one over and winged another. A third one held on to my windshield wipers for dear life. I turned the wipers on and even sprayed the wiper fluid but he remained unfazed and shouted at me over the sporadic honking of my horn that he would have to clear it with his manager, but that he had an awesome deal for me. I finally rolled down the window and started whacking his knuckles with a snow scraper -- one by one until he slid down the hood and off the car. As I drove away I heard him shout "I had Jazz tickets to give away!"

Anyway -- where was I? Oh yes, the elusive Center Street. Since I'd been driving for about 15 minutes by now and didn't want to drive 15 more minutes looking for Center Street, I decided to head back to work, verify the address, and print that stupid map. Parking at my work is horrible and there are never any parking spaces even remotely close to the building I work in. I was going to park in the 'visitor' parking since I would be inside for only a moment. But of course, all the visitor spots were full. So I parked in front of a fire hydrant, crossed myself (there's got to be a Catholic saint of parking violations) and ran inside to my desk.

Closer examination of the map lead me to this important fact: "Center Street" has a second name, which is 7720 South. How a street called 7720 south can be in the center of anything is beyond me. This is a real beef I have with Mapquest. Mapquest, like so many out-of-state visitors I talk to, is totally befuddled by the fact that our streets here have numbers instead of names. So anytime a street has both a name and a number (even if the name is 50 years old and not found on any street signs) Mapquest habitually lists the name. Case in point: Mapquest's insistance that 800 West, the main "through" street in Woods Cross, is actually "Onion Street." Ask any Woods Crossian (I haven't looked that up on dictionary.com, but it should be a word) where Onion Street is and you will get a blank stare. Or possibly a zucchini. But you won't get an answer because none of us have ever called it Onion Street. It probably hasn't been known as Onion Street since the Great Onion Famine of 1907.

Anyway -- where was I? Oh yes, the elusive 7720 South. Armed with my map, I headed back to my car. There was no parking ticket on it, but as I got into my car, who did I see walking toward me? Why, it was the guy at our work in charge of safety, security, facilities and (of course) parking. Was he just walking to the other building, or did he want to talk to me? I don't know, because I started the car and floored it out of there before he got to me.

I headed to the 7720 South, immediately made a wrong turn, and ended up in a residential subdivision. "This is an interesting place for a post office to be..." Reversing my course, I unknowingly drove right past the post office, which was set off the road a little ways. I was looking at the wrong side of the street, and all I saw was an abandoned building and an empty parking lot. Is the post office gone? I reversed direction again and was about to give up when I saw it: shining through the trees like a holy grail (an actual grail, not the conspiracy of a secret royal bloodline of the offspring of Mary Magdalene).

I parked the car and opened the back seat to get the package. Lauralee had written the address on a post-it note and stuck it to the top of the box. I took the box out of the car and put it under my arm and the instant I did so, the wind gusted and blew the address right off of the box and halfway across the parking lot. But the wind didn't stop. I casually walked toward it, because it's impossible to not look like a dork when you're chasing after a piece of paper in the wind. I thought that the wind would stop any moment, and I could non-chalantly catch up to the paper and pick it up. But no. That wind kept blowing. I had no choice but to run after it (still with package under arm). The wind toyed with me a few times, but whenever I got within a few feet of the paper, it blew a little further. It blew over to the next parking lot. It blew to the park strip. It blew to the gutter. Then a big pickup truck drove by really fast, and it blew into traffic. Two lanes of traffic. In each direction. Plus a turn lane. Yep, for about 5 minutes, I stood there and watched my little piece of paper swirl around in traffic, get run over, and swirl around some more in 5 lanes of traffic. I wasn't in the mood to play life-sized, first-person Frogger,

Play
Frogger

so I waited until traffic died down so I could run into the street and get it. Eventually the paper ended up all the way across the street, stuck in the weeds of the park strip of an abandoned building. As traffic died down, I took one step into the road and waited for the last car to pass me when I noticed something: that last car was an undercover police car. Great. I have no idea if anyone still writes tickets for jaywalking, but I figured I'd already pressed my luck with the fire hydrant and didn't want to tempt fate. So as long as the police car sat at the red light, waiting to turn, I stood there on the edge of the road, also waiting for him to turn. I kept an eye on the paper, too, which flapped precariously in the breeze but stayed put in the weeds. Finally, the cop turned and left my sight. I waited for traffic to die down again, and I sprinted across the street (package still under my arm) toward the paper. By this time, a woman walking along the sidewalk had stopped -- unbeknownst to her -- somewhere near my paper. As I got halfway through the street, I realized that this lady might think I'm sprinting toward her, and, given the location (empty parking lot at abandoned building) might freak out. But at this point, I didn't even care. I needed that dang paper. In the end, I think she was oblivious to me running across the street, but I bet she found it funny that I picked up what she thought was a random piece of garbage and put it in my pocket.

Sweaty and windblown, I entered the post office, waited in the shortest post office line ever, and mailed the package without any issue.

Note to Carly: you'd better enjoy that stinkin' package!

Quinn