A Correspondence Course

As a way of bringing a little goodness to daily life while putting off the unpleasant as long as possible, I’ve developed the Citizens’ Mail Prioritizing System (patent pending) that seems to be working well. I am happy to share it.

STEP 1: Gather up your newly arrived mail, then stand over the nearest trash can or perhaps in the yard of an unpleasant neighbor and toss all of the junk mail into the can or onto the grass. This immediately gets rid of all the supermarket ads, the coupon booklets and credit card propositions that should be illegal to send out anyway because so many trees are destroyed to make the stuff.

STEP 2: Take what remains and rapidly flip through it. Set aside anything that looks like personal correspondence or checks. Then take the rest--mostly bills, of course, but not always--and set them on a small unpadded surface of some kind. (A bar stool, wooden chair or crowded counter is ideal, as Step 6 will illustrate.) You are now free to forget about these intrusive items.

STEP 3: Tear immediately into the personal letters. Few pleasures in life can match a genuine handwritten missive from somewhere you’re not. They’re like dispatches from your own private intelligence network. Recently I’ve had the honor of receiving news from Oshkosh, Neb.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Eaton, Colo.; Athol, Mass.; Taveuni, Fiji; Paris, France, and from several points in my favorite of all--Orange County, Calif.

STEP 4: Open checks and set them by the front door of your place. For the next two or three days leave them there, neatly positioned, and glance at them each time you leave or enter the house. Appreciate their integrity, the way this little legal document can actually be drawn up on paper featuring highlights from, say, Disneyland, the American Southwest, or a skier going down a mountain. Take pride in the fact that they are made out to you. Imagine the pleasure of endorsement, deposit, cash back.

STEP 5: When you are tired of reorganizing these windblown checks, which will lift off and fly around your home like tiny magic carpets every time you open or close the door, take them to the bank and assign them their fate.

STEP 6: Toward the end of 30 days, the bills and mystery mail stacked on the bar stool or counter (see Step 2) will begin to slide off or fall down. It is important that bills be stored in a place where they will either slip to the floor or tip over, because this will be your cue that the bills are almost due to be paid. It will happen two to four times a day. When you are angry enough about having to pick up these dread documents, it is time to move them to a large, uncluttered table or desk.

STEP 7: Leave these unopened bills on the desk or table for another one to three days. This is a little breather, a reward for taking the next step toward paying them, a rest before the unpleasant demands of Step 8.

STEP 8: Open one bill at a time, throw away all the attendant junk that bills contain these days, go right to the bottom line, and write a check to cover it.

Do not thoroughly scrutinize each bill for accuracy; companies maintain huge staffs of people to make sure that you neither underpay nor overpay. If you’ve overpaid, the “credit due” statement on the next bill will be a significant mood lifter.

It is critical to achieve the proper state of mind while writing out checks to cover exorbitant bills for things such as bottled water, credit card interest, home mortgages and insurance. You must look upon each payment you make as a victory over the cruel machinery of capitalism.

For instance, you should consider it a triumph over the phone company when you pay them for your calls to Rio; you should be proud that you’ve averted the threat of a scandal-ridden water district’s discontinuing your water service as you write the check. When you pay a ton of money to the gas or propane company, look on this act proudly. It is an act of heroism, a blow struck for the little guy. They are all trying to bankrupt you, and you have won, for now. Gloat.

Never write your account number on a check for the convenience of the company receiving it. And never write “amount paid” in the box on the return portion of the bill. If they can’t read their own bill, find their number on it, and understand how much your check is written for, these are their problems, not yours.

(The obvious exception to this rule is the IRS or Franchise Tax Board of California, two organizations that actually might not be able to find your Taxpayer ID Number on the forms they send to you. Fill in this number for them. Go ahead and fill in the “amount paid” blank also, in the likely event that your check will simply mystify them. Look on these acts as something akin to helping an unthankful elderly blind person across a busy street.)

STEP 9: Take a few moments to leisurely pore over the mail that was segregated in Step 2 but isn’t bills. These are the real wild cards, stuff that can be exciting or banal, but always unexpected.

A recent sampling of my own included a renewed U.S. passport in which I look like a dazed and bloated toad; an anarchist newsletter published by local high school students that contained excerpts from a gay porn magazine called Spunk; a belated birthday card containing a Sizzler Senior Club Discount membership; and a newsletter from an insurance company featuring a cover story that begins, “Taking personal time each day to do the things we truly enjoy is something everybody should do,” and has an article inside called “Laughing Gas Dangers.” Enjoy these offbeat treasures.

STEP 10 (optional): If you subscribe to a cable TV system, check your bill to see if you’ve been charged for “property tax.” If your bill is like mine, you indeed will have been charged, and you may wonder why the gigantic check you write out to “Bob” Citron twice a year isn’t enough, unless he needs more to cover his own cable bills. Make some phone calls to find out why you’re paying property tax every month to the same people who thrust the Home Shopping Channel in your face, and while you’re at it, ask why “Bob” pads his name with those furtive quotation marks. Please write me a letter and let me know what you find out.

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I’d like to correct a mistake in my March 3 column about trying to ride a horse. I wrote that the horse “reared” when in fact he only stopped and pulled back his head as another horse intruded into his area. As an over-excitable non-rider, I labeled this “rearing,” though, as any horse person knows, it is certainly not. My sincere apologies to the fine instructors at the Club riding school at the Sycamore Trails stables in San Juan Capistrano.