Much of what I do, in coaching adults and teaching kids, is about civility and being thoughtful of others So today I was mortified to find a note in my mailbox from the mailman that said, “Please shovel out box. Mail will be held at post office starting 3/21″. Yikes!

On my way back from taking my daughter to school this a.m. I checked out all the other houses on the street and none of them had any snow anywhere near the mailbox. Then I came over the hill and saw ours. Geez. How embarrassing. The snow, by now ice, was halfway into the street. How come, I wondered? Must be shadier there, or someone parked there last time a big storm came through and the plow had to go around their car (good thing it wasn’t towed) leaving a wide arc of ice and snow in front of the mailbox.

Of course, the fact that we simply neglected it for weeks until it was so hard packed you’d need to chip away at it for hours with an ice pick to get even a foot closer to the mailbox, which can just barely be seen peeking out over the snow bank, may have contributed to the problem.

Anyway, when I got back again this afternoon I decided I better try to shovel it out since I had no idea when my sweetie would be home and chances were good by then we’d both have forgotten about it until the next day when our mail went undelivered.

I picked away at the ice for a while and made a pretty good dent in it. It was bad. I can’t believe we kept getting the mail out of that box daily, each time having to climb farther and farther in to retrieve it without giving any thought at all to the person who had managed to jam it all in there in the first place!

Anyway, I wrote the mailman a note back telling him we were suitably embarrassed and apologetic. I said I did the best I could til it thaws some more and that we’d try to be more aware in the future. I left the note in the box and put up the little flag so hopefully we’ll be forgiven and get our mail tomorrow.

No matter how much I try to be thoughtful of others every day, there’s probably always someone or something I miss.

How’d you do today?

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