If Only You Guys Were Seinfeld Fans

Yes, if only you'd watched every episode two or three times, you'd be familiar with the one where Jerry reserved a rental car at the airport, and the girl at the counter told him they didn't have his car. And he realized that the car rental company knew how to TAKE a reservation, they just didn't know how to HOLD a reservation.

Same way with FedEx. They know how to TAKE a Vacation Hold. They just don't know how to HOLD a Vacation Hold. Which, as you may recall, I had requested online, and given a credit card number for the additional charges.

There I was, in Wyandotte, Oklahoma, having a blast with The Pony on our last night of togetherness before he went back to college. We'd just left our second casino, and I was $50 up (it was not to last), and giddy with excitement. As we were rolling down the road after checking in at our hotel with The Pony's free room, my phone buzzed.

It was an email notice from FedEx that my package had been delivered at 4:05 p.m.

Well! As you might imagine, that yanked a knot in my tail! Now I had to worry about what was going to happen to those checks before we got home the following evening. Would the dogs chew them up, as is their general policy, like with Genius's (first) bison leather wallet, monogrammed, with RFID technology, from Sharper Image? Or would somebody come to the Mansion, see the package, and take it for themselves, to forge checks at will for the next 20 years? Or would the dogs drag them off for somebody to find in their yard? Or would we never know what happened to them, thus causing constant worry?

"Crap! Stupid FedEx delivered the checks! I put a VACATION HOLD on packages until Friday! AND I gave a credit card number to deliver that package Friday between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m.! But then every time I checked on it, the website said I had no packages! I don't know what to do, but I guarantee you that those checks won't be there when we get home!"

Farmer H put in a call to HOS (His Oldest Son), to see if he could run down and find the package. HOS was keeping his own six-month-old son right then, his wife being gone in the car, and couldn't ride his Gator-thingy down there with the baby. But he said he'd check, as soon as his wife got home.

We were waiting for our food at a steakhouse when the text came through. HOS could not find the package. The time was right around 6:00. The package had been delivered a mere two hours ago, and there was no sign of it. Farmer H told HOS to look all around the porch, in the garage, on top of Juno's dog house by the kitchen door. And out in the yard, in case the dogs already got ahold of it. And on top of the dumpster, and Farmer H's car under the carport. And in the back of the Gator.

HOS could not find the package. Farmer H told him it was most likely in a envelope, not a box. It was dark by then. Not the best time for finding a package. My anxiety was building. If we found chewed-up checks in the front yard, that was fine. I could order more checks. But finding NO checks would be bad. Farmer H didn't tell HOS what was in the package. No need for him to ask around if anybody found a package. The fewer people who knew, the better. Don't want folks out looking for my checks like they're Easter eggs.

I was about to give up hope, and spend the next 24 hours fretting, when HOS sent a later text. He'd found the package IN THE DRIVEWAY. He said it was all muddy, and had been run over. He hoped he wasn't the one who ran over it, because he didn't want anything to be broken. We assured him it was unbreakable, and Farmer H told him to put the package inside his Trailblazer.

So here's what it looked like when we got home Thursday evening.

Yeah. WHO throws an envelope out in a driveway? FedEx, that's who! No attempt to set it on the hood of a car, or lay it on the rolling dumpster at the very corner of the carport. Nope. Just tossed it out the door. Didn't even get out, I'm sure. Who gets out to lay a package on the driveway?

I'd give the delivery driver a break, and consider that he'd set the envelope on the porch, and the dogs drug it to the driveway... but why would a dog drag a package to the muddy driveway? The dogs would chew it up right there on the porch, or out in the front yard, like with Genius's bison leather wallet, monogrammed, with RFID technology, from Sharper Image.

It is unclear whether the FedEx driver himself ran over the package for spite, or whether HOS ran over it with his Gator-thingy in the dark. Looks like there's tread going more than one direction. It's not like we have a lot of people driving up our driveway. Last time we got anything from FedEx was before Christmas, when we got home from an afternoon at our local casino. We found two boxes sitting in the driveway. Behind the Gator. All askew. The dogs had already chewed the corner of one. Thank the Gummi Mary, those boxes were too big for the dogs to pick up. All the driver had to do was set the boxes IN THE BED OF THE GATOR, to keep them from the dogs.

I'd like to get a picture of that fake camera on the pole across the gravel road. Several pictures. Each one zoomed in a little closer, until the position of the fake camera is revealed. And then, pretending that it's a real camera, email FedEx to say we have the actions of their driver recorded.

I'm pretty sure FedEx doesn't need any more bad press, what with so may videos of them tossing out packages all willy-nilly, and not taking them to the porch. They'd have to save a lot of little old ladies who'd left their packages on the porch, due to falling inside the house and not getting up, to neutralize the package-chuckers.