By Bob Batz

Senior Moments

When I arrived home from work last Tuesday afternoon I noticed there wasn’t any mail in my mailbox.

I was elated because a day without mail for me is like a day WITH sunshine.

It’s a reason hire a three-piece band and break out the old bubbly.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some great mail carriers. But I don’t care if they ever bring me any mail because most of the mail I get is really dumb.

Hey, I can put up with the advertisements for car seat covers and the brochures sent by restaurants that want to give me a half-price hamburger or a free order of French fries.

What I really don’t care for, though, are those come-ons from companies I’ve never even heard of that urge me to consolidate my debts or attend a meatloaf dinner to learn how to put more pizzazz in my retirement years.

How do the total strangers who send me those goofy mailings know I’m up to my neck in debt or that I even like meatloaf?

Then there are those envelopes addressed to “Occupant.”

I’ve always wondered if somewhere out there in America there is some poor soul named “Phil Occupant” or “Becky Occupant” who’s really ticked off because he or she gets a heckuva lot more of those envelopes than I do. If there is, he or she has my sympathy.

I receive tons of cooking magazines, too, but I never read them because I’m a take-out kind of guy and cooking is down really, really low on my list of priorities.

Then, too, there are all those silly catalogs. I’m talking about the catalogs that are filled with colorful pictures of lawn statues, novelty back-scratchers, birdhouses and trillions of other totally useless things that land in my mailbox every week.

Hey, it’s not the postal carrier’s fault I get those dorky offers.

To my way of thinking, companies that send letters and envelopes that are as big as Chicago and addressed to “Occupant” should be charged four no, make that or nine times more for postage to distribute their “Once in a Lifetime Offers” and other trash mail.