Moral Dilemma, No. 547
Many of you may remember from my haunting tale of the history of my abode, that the previous occupant of this house was a sick fuck vacated the premises due to an invite that he just couldn't turn down at yonder state prison.
That was four years ago.
Apparently he had had a live-in named Sandy.
So a couple of months ago, as I was sorting the snail mail, I happened upon an unexpected piece...a letter from an inmate. Previous owner to previous luvah.
Now. How could he be so fool as to not know that his ass had been forclosed upon? FOUR years ago? This I wonder. But for whatever reason, he sent the missive to this address for that woman.
Now. I agonized over the decision to be made. Knee-jerk? "Return to sender," and back in the box.
Well...Understand, it just hit me for the first time that maybe the only reason that we've enjoyed a peaceful, stalker and arsen free existence is because this psycho hasn't been made aware that this particulah address is under new management.
Great. And now I'm gonna tip him off?
I wasn't sure about that, so I tossed the letter aside and granted myself a week to decide.
A week passed, and I began to feel for the man who had sent a letter, yet had heard nothing in response. Stupid female emotions. Piss on them.
None-the-less, I decided to return the letter.
Of course, it had been a busy week, and mail had been sorted, divided, and carried off by multiple members o' household. Okay, so yeah, I kinda misplaced it. Hey, thought that counts, right? Right.
So, last week, and two months later, I stopped by the trusty mailbox for the perfunctory retrieval of junkmail. And amidst the brochures and direct marketing literature was something unusual...handwriting.
The same all caps, black felt penned scrawl that I had seen a few months before. (Perhaps I should check for a powdery residue.)
It looked identical. From same former occupant to same luvah Sandy.
Seeking exoneration, as I was still processing the guilt from misplacing the last opportunity to set this man straight, I wasted no time adding the words, "Return to sender - No longer at this address" on the face of the envelope and dropping it back into the box, with only the slightest twinge of anxiety. (If anyone has some asbestos laying around, I'll take it off your hands. Anything to make this cedar box less flammable.)
The moral dilemma, you ask? Ahh, well, today, as I was cleaning out my car, I happened upon the first letter, the misplaced letter...
Situation having been handled and this sucker being three months old, it's not going back. So uh... trash it? Oooopen it?? The letter continues to hover in my possession like a bad omen, yet I can't seem to shake it...or trash it.
A little help here?
You already gave yourself the best bit of advice you could recieve when you wrote "female emotions...piss on them"; seriously.
Free yourself completely from involvement in prison letter writing. These guys have all day, day in and day out, to think up ways to scam people, and their creativity may surprise you. I once had a prison pen pal, a guy who wanted Frank Zappa tapes, so I recorded some for him. We struck up a correspondence, and he was intelligent and wrote fascinating letters, all of which were sent to a p.o box that left my address anonymous. Somehow he got my adress from his mother, and not only did letters arrive at my house, but my phone began to ring with various inmates I did not know calling up to ask for money. None of this was my pen pals deliberate fault, as far as I know, but in prison anything can happen. One of my letters was seen by another inmate, and one thing lead to another. I broke the whole thing off, changed my number, made it unlisted, and luckily moved thereafter. My pen pal never would tell me what he was in for, but I later discovered it was a molestation charge.
This guy did a lot of flattering, telling me he looked forward to my letters more than anything, and I realized if he got out, he was going to want to meet me. I got very cold feet. Being friendly and compassionate is one thing, opening your life to a potentially negative Darwinian influence is another.
My point is, no matter your best intentions, you are best to have nothing to do with it whatsoever....just my 2 cents.
Werbinox
Pitch it!! Of course, IF it happens to get torn in the process of getting crumpled up and thrown into the waste basket and sheets of paper fall out, you may want to scan them to make sure there are no clues of hidden money under the floorboards,,,but don't tell us, coz I think it's a federal crime to open someone else's mail. I'm not a lawyer, Christina could help on this one!
"Trusty" mailbox. Heh. I get it.
As a former prison guard I can only advise you to READ THAT THING! Prisoner writing is awesome. Think "Belly of the Beast".
Read it first, then trash it.
Okay Werb, I guess when I said "I decided to return the letter," I should have been more specific. I meant I decided to write "RETURN TO SENDER" on his letter and send it back to the psycho! Never did I consider penning a letter, and I was only hesitant to return HIS to him because I don't know when the guy's getting out, and he HAS my address...and thinks it's his!
As for the rest of you, I'm ALL about opening, then trashing...just looking for validation, feels weird.
Read it, post the contents on your blog for the rest of us to read and THEN trash it!
Eavesdropping and opening mail addressed to others makes for excellent blog entries.
Ooooh, I like the way DeAnna thinks! I vote for her idea!!!
I say throw it away and forget about it, but ensure your personal survival tool is always close by.
I'd like to jump on the "read it, post it, then trash it" bandwagon. With names changed to protect the guilty.
Exactly. (Her name ain't "Sandy.")
Oh hell yeah, you HAVE to make a blog post out of it now!
For heaven's sake, now that you've dragged all of us in on this.....you are completely obligated to read it and post the entire contents!! Like, duh! ;)
Oh please commit a federal offense and then post about it! You're kind of anonymous. Those agents won't track you down.
I don't think I could bring myself to open mail intended for someone else. Even if it DID land in my mailbox.
So I went to throw it away, but it fell to the side of the trash can, and now my stupid paper-eating cat is tearing into the damn thing!
I'm just gonna try to tape it back together... ; )
Enough of this already, Key. Just toss it already and get it over with. And posting it would be a bad idea.
Zonk, I'm beginning to think living here would be a bad idea...
You do not want to get involved with this guy in any way, shape, or form. You also want to make sure he has no grudge against you. RETURN TO SENDER, right now, unopened, end of story. Anything else in unethical and dangerous. Just in case, buy yourself something nice at the gun show this weekend.
I did that, the "return to sender" thing with the recent letter, the one I didn't lose.
This other is the "found" one, actually dated Septempter. I was hoping for release information. I'd kinda like to be out of this house before he gets out. Having built the house himself, I fear possessiveness issues.
HammerHead
