They don't deliver like they used to

At 707 in New West we used to get our milk delivered in one of those big yellow Dairyland cube vans. Once a week the chocolate milk man would come and bring me a litre of chocolate milk. I think it was Tuesday.

Once in a while I would quite literally disappear off the face of the earth, only to be found a couple hours later, sitting on the front porch, waiting for him to return, regardless of if he was actually coming that day or not. I'm not a hard girl to win over.

The mailman had a slow, lurching gait like a zombie. If you happened to be out in the yard whenever he came by, he would shuffle up to you with some letters. Bills, mostly. Whenever he opened his mouth, the disembodied spirit of Boris Karloff began to speak: "I have brought your mail." That was all he ever said.

Arnie used to hang around the house and lie in wait for him so he could hear him talk, but to the best of my knowledge, they never met.

I have a weird hyphenated name and people used to take that and the fact that my sister and I don't look remotely like each other as proof that we were part of some sort of weird blended family like everyone else. When people used to ask though, my mom had a different story. "They look different," she would say, "because they have different fathers. The milk man and the mailman."

The majority of people would get it and chuckle a little. Some people, unfortunately, didn't, most noteably, the mother of my best friend at the time, who promptly refused to speak to us ever again. Some people take things way too seriously. Nevertheless, my mother doesn't tell that story very often anymore.

All I know is that I claim the chocolate milk man. He was the best. My sister on the other hand, clearly came from another planet.

In other news, I rolled all the pennies in my piggy bank and now I can pay my tuition. Joy.