SATURDAY AFTERNOON

I asked the mailman if he had delivered my mail yet. “No,” he said, “only yesterday’s.” “Goody!” I replied, “that way tomorrow I can check my mail and pretend it’s new!” “Whatever floats your boat” he said. “That’s precisely what makes my boat float” I said, although I knew that what makes my boat float was infinitely more complicated than that, and often involved letters and postcards,  sometimes books in manila envelopes. But he wasn’t listening anymore. He was delivering mail in a small, brown boat in the middle of a raging sea.