friendly friday our mailman

{photo credit}Because of potty training, OBoy spent a good portion of August nekkid from the waist down. Obviously we put pants on him to go out to stores, restaurants, church, etc., but we quickly became those parents. You know, the ones whose children run around in their yard half nekkid? Yup. Those ones.No shame.The weather was beautiful, our son was making fabulous progress in potty training, and well, he’s two. What little two year old boy doesn’t want to run around outside without pants on? Hello, OBoy’s dream come true. So like the klassy neighbors that we are, we embraced it.We live in the city, where lot sizes are a fairly uniform (and small) 40ftx120ft. This makes for some dense housing (as in if my neighbor and I both reached our arms out our living room windows we could almost high-five). Add to that the fact that our houses were built in the 1920s and 30s so they have built-in mail slots, and it means that our mail deliverers walk from house to house rather than drive to mailboxes along the street. (Isn’t that cute? I grew up in the Suburbia of Suburbias, USA and had never seen walking mailmen or women before college. True story.)Cut to DanO and OBoy drawing with sidewalk chalk on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Up walks our regular mailman. Now, I wasn’t there so I can’t be sure, but my guess is that it was either the green molded plastic toddler potty seat they had with them outside, or it was the fact that OBoy was, again, nekkid, that tipped the mailman off.“Potty training, huh?”DanO and he went on to talk about how our mailman’s grandsons were in the process of training, and how cheerios had become a family favorite for, uhm, aiming reinforcement.Later that week his delivery was timed just as I was leaving the house with the boys for the morning. This time, OBoy was fully dressed. Our mailman stopped to chat with him.“How’s potty training going, young man?”Like a scene straight out of Sesame Street, our neighborhood postman asked my son about going on the potty.What a sweet man. I imagine his is a somewhat thankless job, given that most of the people he affects aren’t even home at the time that he serves them. And please, I don’t even want to think about what his job looks like in the winter here in Minnesnowda.Since that interaction (which had me checking over my shoulder to see if Mr. Noodle was going to show up next or perhaps might the birds break out into the ABCs?) I had hoped to do something special for him, but hadn’t gotten around to it until last week. I made muffins on Wednesday morning, put a few in a box and wrote a simple card that told our mailman how grateful we are for his work and that we love seeing his face around the neighborhood.Then, I staked out by the front windows where I could see our walkway. In the early afternoon when both boys were napping (miracle upon miracles!) I heard the familiar metal clang of our mail slot. I darted to the door and caught him halfway to our neighbor’s house.“We made you some pumpkin muffins. Just wanted to thank you for being so friendly.”Not going to lie, it was awkward. (I imagine this kind of thing doesn’t happen to him everyday.) There was a moment of you shouldn’t have and then a sincere smile from both of us. Silly, probably, to think that some muffins and being a dork, keeping lookout and waiting by the window could make a difference, but I hope that it did. I hope that it gave him just a little glimpse of what he means to the community he serves.:: :: :: :: :: ::Did you step out and do a friendly act this week? I would love to read about it. Please link up here. Only rule is that you link to the post about your act of kindness, not just to your main blog url, that way if people are surfing through in the future, they’ll still find your post. Then, within your post, link back to this post so that others can come join in the giving and the sharing and the love.(Any links that don’t follow the rulesies will be deleted. Capiche?) So? Go ahead! Warm fuzzies all around! Link up below: