Mailboxes are blue. When I put an envelope in a blue US Postal Service box, I’m done with it. All postal jokes and general grumblings aside, once it’s in that box, my whole body believes it’s as good as there.
UK Royal Mail boxes are big red tubes. They look official enough, but dropping a bank deposit (not just any old letter!) into the slot, I can’t help but notice my nervousness. Of course it’s a post box, and yet I have absolutely no direct experiential evidence to prove to myself that this money is not lost forever. Brain is convinced and pushes on, but somewhere deep in my cells, body is totally unconvinced, edgy even.
No wonder kids ask so many questions. They have so little reason to believe anything new. What a rush!
really crazy part is that you’d think somehting rocket-shaped would go faster than something car-shaped!
This is an important cultural artifact. My grad school roommate was Irish, and it came out in his first few weeks of residency in the U.S. that he was having trouble finding mail boxes. I mentioned the big blue box on the corner and he laughed. He took that for a trash bin, even though it was labeled with the USPS logo. He was familiar with neither the color & shape of the box, nor with the logo.
well I hate to worry you Michael, but with years of first-hand experience of those big red tubes, I’d side with body against brain!
😉
yeah, you help me notice, jack… that there is a big difference between understanding culture and trusting it!
Yes Andy…in Canada we have red boxes too, and with the same results. It seems funny that a little thing such as painting the box blue would make mail move faster, but that’s what experience says! Must be something like blue=recycling, red=stop.