Dude, where’s my package?

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Did you find everything you wanted to get on your Christmas list? I scored some pretty good deals this year. We don’t really do a “Christmas List” in the traditional sense. Almost everyone in my family keeps a running list on Amazon and if we need gift ideas, we can just look there. Not me… I just like to drop hints throughout the year just to see how well everyone is paying attention.

They make lists, which is convenient for some of the folks I buy presents for, but I like to “free-range” shop, just using my own ideas and cool stuff that I come across for what to get everyone. I also hate for anyone to know what they’re getting and if you’re just picking stuff off a list, there’s very little in the way of surprise.

As for gifts I receive, I always get a bunch of neat stuff, usu-

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ally from the world of pop culture that everyone in my family knows I’m into, like Friday the 13th, Star Wars, The Office, comic books, etc.

But when I asked that question at the beginning, I wasn’t referring to your own gifts. I meant, did you get everything you ordered in time for the holidays?

As I write this, it’s December 23rd, and we are STILL waiting on a few gifts to arrive. In 2020, for the first time, we had to gift wrap printed out pictures of presents just in case they did not arrive, despite our making very sure that delivery was guaranteed before Christmas. It was like that time back in 1977 when a lot of kids got cardboard pictures of their Star Wars toys because Sears ran out after the unexpected popularity of the movie earlier in the year.

The craziest part is, in some cases, we have had packages go from “on the way” to “delayed” to “status unknown” to “well, we’re not really sure what happened.” I get that it’s a crazy busy time of year, but that package is obviously somewhere, right?

And the dumbest one was a package that arrived at the USPS hub in Memphis on December 18th. Then it was “out for delivery” on the 19th.

Then it was back at the Memphis USPS hub on the 20th.

Then it went to Little Rock… then back to Memphis.

Maybe we’ll get it by New Year’s Eve?