The super always rings twice

The post office called me at 9 this morning, saying they had a priority package for us. Jody the mailman wouldn’t get to our place until 3, but if we wanted the package sooner, we could come over and pick it up.

I lived in Manhattan for 20 years and the post office never called me. Not once.

Countless times, I would find a yellow slip in my letter box saying a package was waiting at the post office 10 blocks away because it was too big to fit in our tiny box.

I’d get there, wait in line for 20 minutes and finally hand the clerk the yellow slip.

She’d disappear and then return with a large piece of junk mail: a 900page catalog of fancy doorknobs. An 1,100-page, 3-pound issue of Vogue.

A footlong tube with a map rolled up inside with the “secret” location of a timeshare property in Cabo San Lucas that I could have for only $250,000.

Never once was it anything worth walking 10 blocks for.

Apartment building mailboxes are a regulation size: roughly one inch by two inches. Which is swell if you’re expecting a surprise package from Tiffany and Co., but not so swell if you are expecting something bigger than, oh, a normal-sized envelope.

All the boxes are equipped with a frail, miniature lock that constantly jams.

The main purpose of the lock is to make it hard for you to get your mail, but easy for thieves to steal it using sophisticated, hard-to-find tools like a screwdriver or a cheap pocketknife.

Getting the mail in the city got to be such a problem that there was talk of getting a doorman for our building.

If you think a doorman is someone who opens the door for you when you enter the building, the first thing I want to say to you is, “Congratulations on reaching your 120th birthday. Please call Al Roker to get your on-air birthday greeting.”

Doormen haven’t opened doors since men wore spats. What they do nowadays is collect your mail, accept your packages and sign for your Amazon deliveries.

“But if we could afford a doorman, Sue and I wouldn’t be living in such a crappy building in the first place,” I said.

Oops ... Did I just say that out loud? At a building board meeting full of our neighbors?

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy bigger mailboxes?” asked Mr. Frisbee. “The money we would save giving a doorman Christmas tips would pay for it.”

At the mention of tips, Mr. Bogg, the building super, jumped to his feet and volunteered to act as mail collector in addition to his other duties. For free.

“What other duties?” I said, because as far as I know, we had been tipping him every Christmas for years for doing absolutely nothing.

The tip was to keep him from sneaking in when we were at work and breaking something. It was like protection money. Things always seemed to break in the bad tippers’ apartments.

But the board fell for it and let Mr. Bogg sign for the mail. As part of the deal, he insisted that the board buy him a fancy coat with gold braid on it, which he wore while he fixed toilets and switched locks.

He also wore it when we went to collect our free mail — mail that he could never seem to find unless he saw a dollar in your hand.

Soon I longed for the 10-block walk to the post office.

Now that we live in a house, our mailbox is gigantic. A family of five could live inside. There is no lock on it.

We still get amazing amounts of junk mail, but it’s so convenient, we don’t even complain about it.

Besides, junk mail helps the economy. It keeps a lot of people in the paper-shredder business employed.

Copyright 2015 United Feature Syndicate. Distributed by Universal Uclick for UFS. Contact Jim Mullen at JimMullenBooks.com.