Today, when I got the mail, there was somebody’s cordless phone in the mailbox.

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What am I supposed to do? Call my neighbors and ask “Did you misplace your phone? Because I think you mailed it to me by mistake.”

Of course, if I have their phone, they couldn’t really answer now, could they, which means I am leaving one strange message on their voicemail. “Um, hi, is the reason you’re not answering because you don’t have your phone? Because I seem to have an extra.”

Hopefully it’s not some criminal tag I don’t know about - “Dude, we’re hitting the house where I put the phone.”

On a side not, I clearly do not know how criminals talk.

What do I do now? Stick it somebody else’s mailbox in some twisted version of phone tag? Give it as a white elephant someday? Let Toddler-Man destroy it? Put ‘dear neighbor’ letters in everybody else’s mailbox? Just let it sit in the mailbox, so as to confuse the mailman?

I could put some stamps on it, I guess, and just let it roam free in the world of dead mail, but I don’t think the mail man would take it, which would result in some sort of bizarre power struggle between me and my mail man, and as fun as that sounds, I’m not really into that. Although I do have a working theory that he is the one who put my husband’s name on the Victoria’s Secret mailing list, since DH has no idea why he gets their catalogs. I laugh every time he gets a card announcing a sale.

Maybe I should just plug it in, (since my own cordless phones are pretty weak), call it a gift, and hide it every time a neighbor comes over. Or maybe, when it comes time to tip the mailman at Christmas (which I’m never sure if I should tip or not, is there a specific etiquette on this?), I should just wrap up the phone and give it back.

The Mystery of the Mail Phone. Doesn’t it just sound like a really crappy (I mean RIVETING) Nancy Drew novel?