I didn’t do anything wrong, I’m not doing anything wrong, but it doesn’t feel right. They talk to me, I think, or maybe its all in my head. Maybe I’m going crazy. No, if I was going crazy all the houses would be the same, all the houses would be numbers and letters. But they can’t be the same, only these have monkeys.

The monkeys have names, Washington, Anderson, Stein, Patel, Dietrich. They told me their names, or maybe the flyers and envelopes did, I’m not sure which.

It’s only one street on my route, actually, it’s only one side of the street, the old side, the side where every house is unique from the others. All the rest of the mail has an address, 123 Main Street, Anywhere, USA. I go about my day making stops at appartments, senior citizen homes, single family units with double stories and twin garages. Part of my day I sit in my truck seat and insert envelopes and advertisements into the small mailboxes with little red flags. At multiunit stops I use the cart and heft all the mail at once, standing for a while to put mail in each of the little stacked boxes, boxes that look like the stacked apartments their residents live in.

In the beginning everything was just an address. The pace seemed quick and the day flew by. As time went on and I got the routine down, I started paying attention to the envelopes. I wasn’t eavesdropping or being nossey. There was no voyuerism involved, I just noticed. I guess the boredom, the repetition, and the setting of a daily pace gave me extra time.

Two-thirty six Fawnskin was late on the car payment. Looks like college acceptance time on Greta Street, some kind of medical emergency on 6^th Avenue.

Slowly, I started to notice little toy statues on top of the boxes on Sandy Lane. A racoon with its masked face. The Yellow M&M character. The house numbers disappeared from my mind. The mail started looking like the little statues. In my mind the the address became the little toy sculpture. One day Peanut, the yellow M&M complained, “All you ever do is put in junk mail. How can they afford to pay you? Give me some of the good stuff like the old days, you know, the envelopes with the windows.”

Racoon spoke up, “You think I don’t notice the overdue bills because of this mask?” I’m thinking maybe I’m going crazy.

“What is you name?”, I asked, hearing my self going crazy outloud. What am I doing talking to a statue? I sped to the next house. More ads, no real mail, the consequence of email and online purchasing. By now the statues were making up for the lack of character in the mail.

“Call me Ziva or Zelda,” the little half dressed, cagged Buddaesque statue said at the next house. “I answer to both.”

What’s with Wonder Woman?

I simply gave the household name to most of the statues. The dog was Patel, the clock airplane was Li, the blue whale Hughes. Kona was the Polynesian statue.

Together I referred to them as the Mailbox Monkeys because they’re all playing with me.

I don’t think I’m nuts. On a bad day I use them as my confessional booth. I’m never judged but I don’t get advise either. Like I said, it’s not wrong but it doesn’t feel quite right.