I have become pretty good at realizing when a Patience Exercise is coming down the pike. And this is when I start deep breathing at a very slow rate and thinking about the Himalayan Mountains. This time I started thinking about them around mid January. Because it was then that I realized the watch I had ordered on January third had not been shipped from Jomas Shop after I ordered it through Amazon.com
To be fair it was not their fault. There was a bug in the system and they didn’t know they should ship the watch. So I called Amazon.com and talked to someone about the situation. They said they would delete the order and I should go ahead and order the watch again. Which I did around the 20th of January.
From another vendor. It was then that Jomas Shop decided to ship the watch. They had gotten an earlier email from me asking about the watch and decided to go ahead and ship it. I guess. Because they never contacted me in a real email. I got one of those auto sent messages telling me to look out for incoming stuff.
Whoopee. Now I had two identical watches on their way. One for each wrist. It never rains but it does pour. So I called back my friends at Amazon and they were very nice again and upset I was having such a problem. They told me to send back the second watch. It had been coming down in price since I ordered the first one so they gave me a twenty dollar rebate. And they would pay shipping if I got a tracking number.
So both the watches arrived and I boxed the second one up with a paper grocery bag and lots of tape. I wrote some messages. I called the second vendor and got a RMA number.
And this morning I got in my car and headed for the UPS store. It’s cross town so I hit all the lights and they were usually long ones. And it seemed like every slow driver in Richmond was out there this morning practicing for the Slow Driving Olympics. We have those here on the spur of the moment when it snows. I was deeply into deep breathing at this point and doing a pretty good job.
So I went in the UPS store and the sweet young lady looked at the package and told me they couldn’t track it because it had a PO Box address. The US Postal Service were the only ones who could track it.
I got in my car and went back across town to the Post Office branch which is about ten minutes from our house. I didn’t know they could do tracking information. You learn something every day. All the slow drivers had decided to have their weekly meeting in the Post Office parking lot and it was nice seeing them all again so soon.
There was of course a long line in the Post Office but they have thoughtfully built a long counter that you can lean on while you wait. And of course when I went in there was a ninety two year old woman who was already inside the door. She had arrived there yesterday and was making her way to the counter. I could have gone around her too. But I was deep in my deep breathing exercise and we went to the counter together.
After awhile we got to the front of the line. And I was feeling good about my progress. If patience is a virtue I was feeling like a virgin “For the very first time”. And I heard the woman behind the counter call out “Sir, can I help you?”
My new friend was blissfully unaware that she had just been called “Sir” and I was busy ignoring this bit of confusion. But then she did it again only a little bit LOUDER. And I pointed at this dear, elderly person and said “SHE’s A LADY”!
And she looked down the row of machines right at me and said “That’s what I said!!” Everybody in line kind of moved uncomfortably like they do in lines when something threatens the progress of the line. And I remembered all the stories I had heard down the the years about postal employees who had lost sight of their reasons for living and demonstrated what it means to go over to the Dark Side.
At that point the other lady behind the counter called me and I left my friend to her destiny. My postal lady to be fair seemed to be someone who was very familiar with group therapy procedures and probably had worked as a nurse in a psychiatric ward at some point. She explained everything to me in great detail and very soon after that the package was on its way north while I headed home with my tracking information in hand.
And while I am still in love with Amazon.com I will be more careful about using associated vendors in the future. And I wish that I could tell you that when I approached home a giant sink hole was roped off down the street from my house and it would have opened up at the exact moment I rode over it if everything had gone smoothly.
No. It was just a little exercise in patience building. The universe is a school with many more than 16 grade levels. And we are its students. I am afraid it is going to take me a long time to get through the lower grades. And I should probably not even bother wearing a watch. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
If you have to ask “Are we there yet?” then you have already answered your own question.
