Living out of boxes

When I went to the Peace Corps, my father fearlessly agreed to keep my files, receive mail for me and generally trouble shoot any urgent financial or legal issues that emerged. Fortunately, everything was pretty well under control when I left and as I slowly assumed responsibility for my life again I schlepped all my things between North Carolina and New York, a little bit at the time. The boxes with all my papers (tax returns, bank statements, etc.) posed more of a problem. It was in a relatively contained plastic files box, but it was really too heavy to carry as a carry-on on the airplane. Getting things delivered in New York is one of those things that should be easy but in fact always poses some unforeseen challenge. So when my father sent this important box of files, Priority Mail, announcing that it should arrive on Saturday, I thought the surest thing would be to leave a note for the mailman, telling him to just leave the box in the mail room. I would be around Saturday evening at some point to grab it and all would be well. The thing is, the box didn't come. And the next day it didn't come. Nor the next. Usually the USPS leaves you a little beige ticket saying that you have a package and please come and get it, but there was no beige ticket. At this point, I started to haunt the mail room and harass my super with plaintive inquiries and incredulous looks. It occurred to me that this box was an identity theft starter kit, with my tax returns from the last three years, several complete sets of billing statements and all my bank statements, providing all sorts of relevant data about my spending patterns and whereabouts. My living will and my medical proxy form were even in there. Jane helpfully pointed out that this this was the last thing anyone was likely to make use of, but I imagined the worst. For 2-3 days, I was convinced that the box had been left in the building and had fallen into the hands of some interloper who even as I spoke was planning to become me, start several credit cards in my name, buy several plane tickets, and generally create a mess which would take, at the very least, lots of time on the phone with unkind people in call centers to clean up. At this point I hid my blog profile and changed my security settings on facebook.

Fortunately Pop had sent it insured which meant there was a tracking number and when I presented the fax copy of the insurance slip, they produced the box forthwith. I didn't even ask why there had been no beige slip. I have never been so happy to lug a 20 lb. box cross town.