It used to be that whenever I didn’t get any mail I would wonder who got my mail that day. The days when there really was no mail were rare, and kind of scary. Really, though, I think I lost more mail by misfiling it than the post office ever did by misdirecting it. Anyway, it wasn’t a big worry, because there weren’t many days when I didn’t get at least a couple of advertisements or a few bills.

In the past two or three weeks, there have been several days when I didn’t get any mail. The first time it happened, I freaked out as in the old days. By the second time, it had already started to seem like a pattern, so I didn’t worry as much. After all, I pay most of my bills on line now, and I haven’t bought anything much by mail order that I didn’t order over the Internet. Most people who want to reach me do so by email, so there’s good reason that my mailbox (the metal one out on the street) will be empty once in awhile.

Then today I got a magazine that should have been delivered last Thursday or Friday, and it started me wondering again. I wondered where it’s been all this time. I wondered if it had been dropped off in someone else’s box and spent a few days in a strange house before finding its way to me. Now probably the next time I don’t get any mail, I won’t be so complacent. It’ll be like the old days, when a day without mail was a day to fret.

The magazine was Entertainment Weekly, one of the few I still get in the mail. I read The Atlantic Monthly and Newsweek on Kindle, and I’ve stopped most of the other magazines I used to get because I can get fresher information on their web sites these days. This issue of EW has TV recommendations for this week, so it’s already half stale. But that’s okay, because I watch much less TV than I used to. It also gives Australia, a movie I loved (and watched on DVD last night), a C grade. That would have been no use to me either.