When I stepped up to the door to my place today on my way back in from Echo I was greeted by a package slip from the United States Postal Service letting me know that while I had missed the postal worker, I could pick up the package or have my agent pick up the package. Seeing as how I didn’t have any sentient agents handy (though I do keep a selection of cleaning agents), I decided to make the trip to the post office immediately. After all, the package they held for me was a very important one.

Before I go on, I’d like for you as the reader to evaluate the use of the word “agent” as they have it. I mean, sure, in grandiose speeches and literature someone might be the agent of peace or an agent of evil, but an agent of a previously absent package recipient? Why not, “You or someone you choose may pick up your package?” Not that I would made employing someone as an agent of my will, retrieving for me those things which my burdensome life prevents me from retrieving for myself. Maybe the technical writer who wrote that blurb knew that someone somewhere would see the literary genius behind its use.

Back on the topic however, I left my place again and drove the short way to the post office. To my interest, I parked between a beaten up Mustang and a newer model Porsche Carrera 4S. The rest of the parking lot filled the gaps between the $2,000 Mustang and the $80,000 Porsche, but I found it odd to note that all the cars were in the same place at the same time. Where else but the post office would you find such a mix of people brought together to take part in the same kind of business?

As I entered the clerked area inside, I found myself in line with a guy in his late teens sporting dyed black hair, very tight pants, and a large box to be sent. In front of him a massive woman was waiting with her child, assumably to pick up a package. At the front of the line a handsome (if balding) late-40-something guy stood wearing pressed slacks and a sport jacket. I can only assume that he was the Porsche driver–he had the right air of money, frustrated vanity, and middle-crisis eligibility.

The clerks were equally heterogeneous. The man who took my card and got my package for me was in his early forties at least and was built like a weight lifter, but seemed to me obviously gay. To his left, a female clerk was speaking very green English riddled with slang and subject-verb mashups that only sound natural when spoken by a true Southerner. Her hair was long, wavy, and generally unkempt. To my eye, she had the ring of one who found her identity in the 80s and never reevaluated. At the last counter, I spied a tall, dark-skinned man in a nice suit passing envelopes back with a woman wearing a well-puffed Victoria Beckham do (I’m sad to report she lacked VB’s fie-on-gravity breasts).

I have, since I left there, been trying to come up with a scenario in which that same group of people might find themselves together for a common set of services. Grocery shopping? Maybe half the people, but I can’t recall the last time I saw a Porsche parked in front of Kroger or Wal-Mart. A funeral? Seems unlikely that the listed people would share a common enough social circle for that. Perhaps a sporting event might bring them together, though I doubt that the young guy would make it out to something like that. So, as the title mentions, I think the USPS has a unique ability to bring members of disparate groups under one roof. I can’t say I felt energized by the exposure or that I gained some broadened world view from it, but it was at least interesting to see that people, when their differences are inconsequential to the task at hand, can peacefully co-wait in line and serve or be served.