So you think Valentine's Day always goes rosily, eh? I know that's a terrible pun. But it's still a lot better than what happened to "a lady from Bethesda" on the fabled day for lovers.
In that day's mail, the lady received a valentine that was sealed inside a plastic pouch. This is how the U.S. Postal Service handles things whenever one of its machines has mangled a letter. The plastic pouch bears an apology, in large print. All in all, it's an excellent (if slightly impersonal) way to explain and atone for a dismaying mistake.
But when the lady from Bethesda opened the plastic pouch and examined the envelope, she discovered that the upper left corner had been chewed off.
That's right. Chewed off.
"I thought the post office had mice because it looked like the envelope had been chewed by mice," the lady said. But when she showed the envelope to a friend, the friend pointed out that the tooth marks were bigger than any mouse could manage.
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Reluctant conclusion of the two friends: the tooth marks were human.
The two pals had no idea what sort of weirdo would have gotten kicks by gnawing through an envelope to get at a valentine. But the motivation became crystal clear later that day when the lady from Bethesda got a phone call.
It was a second friend. He asked if she had gotten the valentine he had sent. She said she had.
Then he asked if she had enjoyed the chocolate inside the valentine.
Light bulb!
No mouse had chewed through that valentine. It was almost certainly a postal worker who guessed what was inside the valentine -- or perhaps smelled what was inside. The worker had gotten an attack of the hungries and had helped himself or herself.
Now, I could urge an investigation by Congress, the postmaster general or other agencies more and less holy. But let's do it the easy way.
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If the culpable postal worker is reading this, you know what you did and you know whom you did it to. Go buy a Whitman's Sampler and leave it on the Bethesda lady's doorstep. She promises not to tell. She won't even complain if she picks the piece with the squishy red goo in the center.
Red-light running is so common that I expect it to become an Olympic event one of these days. Alas, it is already an excellent way to win a gold medal in damage and injuries.
Share this articleShareBut the largest gold medal ought to be reserved for an event called lying. Maria Crocco recently found this out, to her utter shock.
Maria says she was waiting at a red light in the left lane of a street. A sport-utility vehicle was beside her in the right lane.
When the light turned green their way, Maria began to enter the intersection. But out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a car approaching fast from the left -- and it was speeding up rather than slowing down. Clearly, the car was going to try to run the now-red light. So Maria slammed on the brakes.
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Unfortunately, the driver of the car beside Maria's didn't notice the bullet approaching from the left. He proceeded into the intersection and was smacked broadside by the red-light runner. The only good news: No one was hurt.
When the police arrived, the red-light runner insisted that the light had been green his way and red the other way. "What nerve!" Maria writes.
But the nerve bore fruit. When everyone turned up in court two months later, "all he got was a $50 fine for running the light," Maria reports. Apparently, lying sometimes works.
Maria says she has learned a lesson from the incident. Before venturing into an intersection, she counts to three -- even if the light is green her way. Not a bad habit to adopt.
But if Maria is still shocked that people lie -- or if you are -- you'd all better get over it. Police will tell you (and they have long told me) that in a traffic accident where it's one party's word against another's, lies are the rule, not the exception.
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The answer, police tell me, is to hunt up witnesses.
Don't wait, because most of them will disappear within seconds, and few if any will respond to a classified ad placed three weeks later. But if you have been smashed into by a red-light runner, and another motorist saw it happen, it will suddenly be two against one. That way lies the sort of justice that liars and red-light runners richly deserve.
Wisdom from Judge Stephen L. Grossman:
"The reason the District has so many more potholes than do the suburbs is that the suburban jurisdictions have learned how to deal with them.
"They simply turn the potholes over and convert them into speed bumps."
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