The following is a guest post from the hilarious blogger, mother and Johnny Depp lover, Jenny. Check out her wonderful blog, I’m Having a Thought Here.

Recently my darling husband made a run to the post office, planning to do the unthinkable: purchase a stamp. I know; an intervention may be necessary. Someone this delusional needs immediate help.

It was late in the day and traffic was draconian, and despite my husband’s best efforts at speeding and tailgating, both of which he does exceptionally well, he did not make it to the PO quite in time. As in, he entered the lobby at 5:01 p.m. according to the Official Government clock on the wall.

Now, I know the post office closes at five o’clock on weekdays, y’all. Everyone knows that. Even my husband knows that. So call him crazy (I often do), but since only sixty seconds had elapsed since quittin’ time and the “workers” were apparently all present and accounted for, fiddling around near their scales and cash registers and whatnot, and a few customers were in fact still being actually waited upon, he approached a “worker” and asked if he could buy a stamp.

One stamp.

The “worker” stared at him for several seconds before speaking. She gaped at him far longer than it would have taken her to sell him the single stamp, or even a whole book of stamps. He began to wonder whether perhaps a pair of lobsters had somehow landed on his head and were waltzing there.

“You have to buy it out of the machine,” she finally said, exhibiting a level of animation on a par with anesthetized algae.

Fighting a mighty urge to succumb to the aggravation he justifiably felt, my husband obediently turned and walked the ten yards to the stamp machine embedded in the lobby wall. He attempted to buy a stamp.

One stamp.

Only, the machine was empty.

He returned to the counter and the catatonic “worker.”

“The stamp machine is empty and I really need to mail this,” he pleaded.

She did not blink. She did not move. She did not speak. She simply stared. Time continued its inexorable march toward the far reaches of eternity. Fortunes were made and squandered. Tens of thousands across our great nation came of legal age to sit for the Civil Service Exam. The price of postage doubled. Then …

“You can buy a stamp from me, sir,” came a tiny voice from my husband’s left.

It was another postal customer. A little lady with a stamp she was willing to sell.

My husband gratefully paid her, accepted the stamp, stuck it on his piece of mail, and walked back out to the lobby to deposit the envelope in the “Stamped Mail” slot.

The motionless “worker” watched his every move. For all I know she is still standing there … keeper of mum, keeper of the eternal postal flame. Keeper of stamps.