My Mailman > Your Mailman

So dudes don't typically buy other dudes gifts—or at least that's how I've operated for most of the 31 years I've been alive. There were the occasional exceptions, like when you find certain things on clearance that are just too good to pass up.

Seeing as my now former employer gave me a good old-fashioned ass-raping by failing to include my tips on our final checks two days before Christmas, friends got nothing from me this past holiday season—although that didn't stop dear buddy B. Doggy from giving a fine winter cap just like the one pictured here.

"Are you going to wear it?" he originally asked, seemingly concerned about it. I assured him I was truly thankful for his gesture and now some two months later, I can't think of an occasion he HASN'T seen me wearing the gift. I couldn't find my old one at the time and it's still winter here in Chicago.

The cap serves both of what I believe are its two intended purposes: Keeping my ears warm and getting people to talk to me about the Blackhawks (which is preferable to talking about ... oh, just about everything else in my life). One person that the hat has most certainly had a visible effect on is our mailman.

He's deaf, so he has a bit of a speech impediment, but most days he comes up to the house and hands me the mail while I'm smoking, he'll point to the top of his head and say something along the lines of "Go Hawks!" Today, I was on the phone, so I figured he'd just hand me the mail and go about his way. I was talking with a friend about what was happening with work and how it was sounding like I was going to be fired—for watching a Blackhawks game, actually.

After handing me the mail, however, he began saying something which I didn't catch the first time because my friend on the phone was also talking. Any other person—especially in the middle of this employment situation—interrupting a phone call of mine would likely get an earful.

Of course, what really gets accomplished by yelling at a deaf person?

What's more, the guy was just asking about the hockey games. Yeah, I know, he was asking about Olympic hockey, and if you don't know how I feel about that whole two-week exercise in meaningless television, well here you go. Still, I told my friend on the phone to hold on for a second and I verified the times of the day's hockey games in the newspaper for the mailman, who smiled, thanked me and went along his way.

Then I apologized to my friend for placing him on hold and tried to remember where I left off. I'd probably been bitching about something with how the whole situation with work went down or maybe voicing concern about where the next paycheck would be coming from. In short, they were a lot like the concerns I've heard countless others have in this Great Recession.

I went to the end of the driveway and watched the mailman sorting through envelopes in the back of his truck, wondering how difficult it must be to drive if you're deaf and if it's like I remember Jake "The Snake" Roberts teaching me during his episode of blindness that the weakening of one sense makes the other four stronger. Or something like that.

But perhaps what registered with me the most was that our mailman obviously worked through his disability and hardly lets it get in his way. And then the next natural question I had to ask myself was, "So what's my excuse? What's holding me back?"

And the answer, of course, was nothing other than myself.