as promised: a mailbox obsession

Thursday, aug. 24, 2006   |   0 comments

One of my all-time favorite cewebrities, Rob Cockerham (and did I mention that he once made an appearance at one of my birthday parties? it’s true: Cake Trough 2003), recently conducted an experiment (subsequently picked up by 20/20) in which he tore up a pre-approved credit card application, then reassembled it with scotch tape, filled it out, and penned in a change of contact address and phone number. The address he used was his parent’s, and what do you think arrived at their house just a week later? A brand new credit card! In short, if you don’t thoroughly and utterly destroy those applications, they’re incredibly easy to resurrect. Not only that, but if you have a mailbox that’s easy to get to, all a thief and/or junkie* has to do is pluck any credit-card-looking envelopes out of your mailbox, fill out the form (changing the address to some third-party location), and then start charging away. And since the bills wouldn’t be coming to you, it would be months before you found out about it.

Marco’s mailbox, which is now my mailbox, faces right out onto a busy street here in Oakland. It’s one of those cheapo super-easy-access mailboxes, with the flip top and the scooped magazine prongs underneath. And it’s so shallow that any regular-sized envelope is tall enough to keep the lid flipped open, thereby exposing and clearing advertising the luscious unclaimed mail waiting inside. And did I mention that there are lots of ruffians milling about in this neighborhood? We often come home to find an empty can or bottle of rot-gutter style libations tossed onto the ground in the little mailbox/trashcan culdesac, along with other surprises, including the occasion puddle of urine and, on very special occasions, human turdles (Happy Dump Day!).

So Rob’s experiment left me feeling very queasy about my mail-fraud vulnerability. In fact, the morning after I read his thing, I woke up at 5am in a low-grade panic. I turned to Marco and hissed, “We have to get one of those locking mailboxes!” (he rolled over and hid), then I got up and starting making a bunch of irate calls: to the universal “Opt Out” number for all credit cards (888-5-OPTOUT/567-8688), to my credit card company (whom I told to please, please stop sending me those terrifying credit card checks in the mail). And then, once Marco had his coffee, I marched him on up to Home Depot, where we bought ourselves a very ugly and expensive mailbox with a locking mechanism. Of course I’ve since discovered that it’s not entirely impossible to grope your way in through the top, especially if you have dinosaur arms like me (or, say, emaciated junkie arms!!!). But the mailbox at least appears formidable from the street, which comforts me some.

* Friends will tell you that I suffer from a somewhat crippling fear of junkies. And it’s true! I’ve always been leery of needle users, but not in any insane or unusual way, a general reluctance to get cozy with street addicts being I think fairly standard? However my fears took a turn for the irrational the night I stumbled upon the documentary Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street, and then stayed up until 4am watching with horrified fascination. The way that movie captured the junkie’s disturbing and alien sense of priorities, with heroin reigning supreme above everything else — food, loved ones, strangers, the innate sense of self preservation — just completely unhinged me. The fact that all the action took place right in the middle of my neighborhood was particularly unsettling. Hey there’s my favorite coffee place! That’s my bank! Suddenly my eyes were forced open to the fact that all those kids hanging around looking “tired” were totally junkies! (I’ve since had similar quease-fest, sort of a paranoia refresher course, after accidentally getting sucked in to Intervention during a recent Jetblue television marathon.) Anyway, I know that these ideas of mine aren’t all that politically correct, that addiction is a disease, etc. And I do have a great deal of intellectual sympathy for those who struggle with the white pony. And yet … couldn’t the same be said about zombies? It isn’t exactly their fault that they got bit by an undead type, but now that they’re pale and lurching and scabby and trying to kill me, it would be crazy not to run away from them, right? Or at the very least buy a very expensive locking mailbox?