Israel

By: C.Whyte
October 21, 2005

So this afternoon I'm walking up to my doorstep when I see a random white box sitting in front of the door. This box made a homeless man's home look like a mansion. It was horrible, completely crushed and man-handled to the fullest degree. For a minute I thought that someone had thrown their trash at my door and I began to look around for Ashton Kutcher 'Punking' me. Embarrassingly enough, there was no one to be seen. Not even any cars on the road, so I went in for a closer look at the mystery box.

The First thing I notice is the writing on the box: it is un-American. Not liking un-American things (aside from Asian stuff because that stuff is usually pretty legit) I began to wonder what the hell some foreign package was doing on my doorstep, and more of all how it got there. The box had red letters saying "Israel Postal Authority" on the top and side next to all the gibberish lettering. "Israel?" I thought, "This can't possibly be good."

My main fears came from the condition that the box was in. As mentioned before, a homeless person wouldn't even drop a deuce in this thing. It was all banged up and bent and not taped together anymore, falling apart at almost every corner. It was a complete mess and an insult to mail system in America. I can only imagine the FedEx employee shed a tear as he lay the package down after seeing the final condition the box was in. We all know this wasn't an American butchering of the package, or was it?

My mind suddenly wondered to the idea that people in customs might have had to search this package when it was shipped into America, and needless to say (due to the fact that it was from the Middle East) left the box a complete mess. I then thought that maybe it was the shippers over in Israel who were doing the damage. Perhaps a disgruntled worker pounded his fist down on the box in disgust to its final destination? Whichever the case, I decided that I should probably not touch it for a while.

After about 5 minutes of sitting inside wondering what was in the box, I went back out to look at it again. I noticed this time that the package was addressed to one of my housemates Sarah. Well, Sarah kind of rhymes with anthrax, so I got a little scared for my life. At that exact point in time I decided that if I was going to go down in life, this is how I would want to go, so I commenced to pick up the mangled box and brought it to my kitchen counter table.

Everything holding this box together was falling apart. In fact, I'm not too sure what was holding it together. Perhaps the bomb inside? Perhaps there was nothing inside and it was just a practical joke from my Syrian ex-boss at Falafel or some stupid kid? Who knows. All I knew at that point in time was that there is a box on my kitchen counter that's trying to get to my housemate Sarah and no matter how bad or mysterious or dangerous the package looks, she was going to get it. So I left it on the table.

Three hours and thirty-seven minutes later Sarah walks in the back sliding glass door. Like a puppy greeting its master, I sprung into action and waited next to the box. Going unnoticed for a few minutes, I eventually brought up the fact that there is a large mysterious box just 'chillin' on the counter and that it looks like it needs to be opened (even though it pretty much already was). Sarah simply said "oh, ok" and began to open the box. Needless to say I felt like a horse's petute for being so afraid earlier.

Turns out the box did have a mysterious substance inside. A dangerously outdated cell phone that was about 10 times the size of the iPod Nano (tiny piece of crap). Apparently my housemate's dad had sent her his old American cell phone from Israel for her to use in place of her lost phone. Weak, I know. My question is this: Why did your dad go through all the trouble of sending you a phone from Israel when you can get big arse phones like that for FREE at just about anywhere in the world. Hey Sarah, perhaps your dad got that phone for free in Israel and mailed it to you so you wouldn't have to walk 5 minutes downtown to pick one up for yourself! Moral of the story, don't scare the be-Jesus out of me for a friggen' old school cell phone.