BY JENNIFER ADAMS

I'd like to talk to you about something of great importance to me ‑ the U.S. mail. I think the post office has something against me.

Actually, the post office should be grateful to me. I almost single-handedly support it. Every two weeks I visit the little building on Oakton Street with a gigantic stack of thick envelopes, including manila envelopes to foreign countries. (Do you have any idea how much mailing manila envelopes to foreign countries cost?) What do the people at the post office do to show their gratitude? They take two months to deliver to Mount Prospect a letter from me.

The post office employee who hates me the most is the mailman for my block. I get just as much mail as I send out, and the poor fellow to keep his job has to deliver every bit of it. The government does not care when or how the mail is delivered so consequently the mailman does little things to aggravate me.

For example, every Saturday the mailman takes forever to come. According to my mother, he promptly arrives at 9:30 a.m. every weekday. On Saturday, the earliest he comes is 11 a.m. He jogs from house to house until he reaches our nextdoor neighbor's residence. Instead of cutting across the lawn the mailman walks slowly and deliberately on the sidewalk, like a drunk trying to pass the straight line test. It takes him 10 minutes to the 50 yards to the mailbox.

My mailman knows I'm waiting, and I will not come out to get the mail until after he leaves; so he wastes as much time as he can on the stoop by the mailbox. How he wastes his time really makes me mad. He reads the envelopes. The envelope fronts aren't bad ‑ all he can learn is that Leah loves Shaun; Linda worships Davy; Karan relates to Peter; Sue can understand Micky; Kathryn thinks Mike is great, and Terry groks Spock. The back is, however, personal stuff. The mailman does not care. He gets his jollies from the envelope backs. One Saturday he spent 45 minutes laughing over lines like "contents: one letter, 54 pages long and one segment of the Chronicles, 19 pages." The guy is sick.

The mail sorters are not totally innocent, either. They are organized by my cousin. This cousin is slightly clumsy ‑ he was banned forever from driving because he caused an 18‑car pile‑up during his driver's test. The rest of the family refuses to acknowledge his existence. He is never sent letters or presents or even Christmas cards. So, every letter or package he sorts for me causes him great pain. He and his rotten little buddies on the mail sorting graveyard shift conveniently lose things I'm expecting, like birthday presents. Just yesterday I got a birthday present with a card that said "Happy Twelfth Birthday." I am going to be 16 on my next birthday. You figure it out.