I am our Mailman's Adopted Daughter

Somehow I think I have been adopted as our mailman's daughter he never had. Working at our apartment complex's office, I interact with our mailman just about five days a week. And to top it off, he is also our neighbor and regular customer at the bakery. He enjoys talking to me about his days in the military, about the beaurocratic problems in the United States Postal Service, and about his photography excursions chasing wild animals.

For Christmas, he gave Chris, Sam, and me photographs he had taken--war planes for the boys, and flowers for me (and we gave him a loaf of bread, quite the original present, huh!), he has offered to do a family portrait for us one of these days, though we have never taken him up on the offer.

He frequently tells me that we work too hard and deserve a vacation. He then continues on to list all the cities we could day-trip to and the restaurants we should eat at. When Chris and I were debating what to do with our store for Memorial Day, our mailman encouraged us to not work it and do something fun.

When we decided to follow his advice and actually take a break away from our store for Memorial Day, I told him were thinking about going camping (though in the end we did day trips to Olympia and then to Seattle instead of camping), and he freaked out on me afraid that something bad would happen to us.

Him: Do you know the difference between a Black Bear and a Grizzly Bear?

Me: No.

So he drew me a picture of each kind and explained how to handle each situation if we happened to run into one.

He also went over the basics of snake bites, spider bites, what to do if we run into other types of potentially dangerous wildlife, where to store our food, etc. He asked if we had a good enough camping equipment and knew the basics of camping. Yes, Mr. Mailman, we have been camping before. We're not totally ignorant! He probably repeated the phrases, "Just be safe" and "Just be careful out there" five or six times!

It was kind of funny and sweet that he cares about our safety. I just wish he would care less about our mail--he can get pretty nosey sometimes!

(and in case you were wondering the difference between a black bear and a grizzly bear, here is a little lesson for you in case the pictures don't give you enough information. Black bears are smaller and have bigger ears. Grizzly bears have a shoulder hump and have smaller ears. They also have different profiles as you can see in the sketches.)