You guys all suck at riddles

There are a few things I will never understand in life:

1. Why people bother cleaning their pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters
2. Why mail never, ever gets delivered to my apartment in my name
3. Why mail regularly gets delivered after 10 PM on our street. Yes, the postman is out there pushing his basket around at the dead of night as merrily as if it were the middle of the afternoon when kindergarteners are being let out of school
4. Out of all the pretty girls out there, why many, many people persist in believing Keira Knightley is REALLY good-looking

Continuing my endless struggle with the post office, yet another thing has not arrived to my apartment (MOM I DO NOT NEED YOUR HELP), and I'm beginning to wonder if I have somehow personally offended the mailman. Did I inadvertently step on his toes? Did I once walk past him without smiling, saying a friendly hello? Does he not like my shoes?

I was talking to my friend Stacy the other day and she brought up that she needs to write an essay for English about an experience that changed her. Not in which she learned something, just an experience that changed her. And she didn't know what to write.

It would be difficult for me to write on this topic as well, considering I can still fit into jeans from 6th grade, and since I sometimes still look around toilets to ascertain there are no spiders nearby. However, reflecting on the reaction of some of the people who I hadn't seen for years at the wedding I attended last weekend ("She speaks!"), I began to think that maybe there had been some change rendered. And I believe I know where it came from.

It came from dealing with too many people who work at the post office. From having to have conversations like the following:

Me: This flight is going to Chicago?
Girl: Yes. I'm going to visit my family I haven't seen in 15 years.
Me: Oh?
Girl: Yeah, it's my graduation present.
Me: Graduation is early this year.
Girl: I went to a special school, because I was in and out of the hospital. What section are you boarding? Yeah, I'm in the back too. Normally I'd have my friend's dad who's a pilot fly me out to Chicago, but he's busy.

You can be unloved, or you can be sickly, or you can be rich, BUT YOU CAN'T BE ALL THREE.

The transformation also came from boys asking me how old I think they are, which I hate because that is just a way to weasel out a compliment from someone. Because if you say an outrageously high number, then the boy will be offended and the girl will afterwards have to be very nice to make it up to him, and if she says a low number, then the boy will be flattered.

Yes, these experiences have transformed me into who I am today: someone who cringes at many parts in Sound of Music, and someone who today, when sitting in the library trying to read with the sound of a large man's snores reverberating throughout the silent floor, filling every corner with thunderous booms and rumblings, left a note for him saying "Please snore elsewhere."