I think one of the least helpful safety tips I’ve ever heard is the one about not having a predictable routine. I am wondering what life looks like, if the day’s schedule needs to be built with the assumption that criminals are watching and charting our EVERY MOVE, looking for patterns. All this tip does is give me a rush of adrenaline when Paul leaves for work at the same time each day: QUICK! LOCK THE DOOR BEHIND HIM! THIS IS THE MOMENT THE CRIMINAL WILL BE READY TO SPRING!!
By the way, if you do what I do and buy gift cards one at a time each time you go to Target, this is around the time to start. The number of weeks until Christmas is roughly nine, so in fact some of us may need to double up on the cards: I need three for classroom teachers, five for school bus drivers, three for music lesson teachers, one for a coach, and one for the mail carrier. I think I usually try to start in September, but spaced it.
I do notice this new job, as few hours as it is, leaves me with fewer available brain ports. I have to write things down immediately or they’re gone. And then I lose track of the lists.
I’m interested in Postcrossing again. I’d gone down to doing it mostly in December: I liked sending holiday postcards with holiday stamps. But suddenly I was in the mood to send cards, so I did, and now I’m at my sending limit and waiting eagerly for some to arrive at their destinations so I can send more.
One of the most awful ones I read (on Facebook, of course) was taking a picture of your children every morning so you have a recent photo to give the police in the chance that they are abducted. Let’s first set aside the fact that child abductions are so, so rare. If you are really concerned about safety you shouldn’t even get in your car. What a creepy, terrifying way to start your day and a bizarre conversation to have with your children, ‘here kids, let’s take your photo for the missing child posters!’ Who wants to live with that kind of paranoia?
Years ago I had a salesman-y friend (you know, the ones who are always trying to get you to host parties and sell things?) who pitched to our group of neighborhood moms an ‘innovative’ new keychain/thumb drive on which you could store recent photos of your kids, so that when *not if* they are kidnapped, the cops will have photos right away! and that will help so much! MORBID. Obvs this was before smart phones killed that side-business.
Taking a picture every day in case your child gets kidnapped does seem overly paranoid. However, I do think it could be a good idea to take a picture with your phone before you leave for a crowded event like a festival or a day at an amusement park. If your child gets lost or separated from you (far more likely to happen than a stranger kidnapping), it could be useful to have a picture of what your child is wearing so people can help you find him/her more quickly.
What really gave me a rush of adrenaline was your gift card schedule and the 9 weeks until Christmas! That is seriously horrifying. My kids schools usually do a collection for one big card, (mercifully), but I haven’t even given a tiny thought to Christmas yet. I do so honestly wish we could all agree to move it until January 25th instead. Every year the prep time seems shorter and more rushed, and Winter is so long and dreary after it’s over.
I used to work at a bank and they told us we should take a different route to work often. It was like, it’s 3 miles away, there are only so many routes unless I want to go half an hour out of my way. (I don’t)
We actually did have a robbery attempt, we used to park behind the bank where there was a dumpster and a brick wall separating the entry door from the parking area. Some dudes were waiting under a shower curtain by the dumpster and surprised the person opening (not me). That has nothing to do with your route to work, but everything to do with what was really a terrible idea (parking in the back there). We started parking in the front after that. They did not get in and nobody was hurt but it was obviously VERY FRIGHTENING. The person opening had her kid with her (also a TERRIBLE IDEA) but I think that helped her to foil the attempt.
I guess my point is, think about your routine, but it’s ok to have one.
When you do Postcrossing, do you write messages on the postcards? What sort of thing do you write? When you receive postcards, what sort of thing do other people write, if anything?
WELL. (You should see how perky I am to be discussing it. Paul has long since tired of hearing about it.) Sometimes the person I’m sending a card to will have a request, such as “Tell me about a dream you had,” or “Tell me what you’re reading / listening to / interested in right now.” So then I do that, usually, except in the cases where I think, “No, thank you” (for example, someone will ask to hear a secret, but I can’t think of any, or at least not any I’d want to write on a postcard).
If there’s no request, I have a variety of stock sentences I use in various combinations. For example, I might say my age, that I’m married, how many kids I have and what their ages are, what I do for fun, what I do for part-time work, something about my pets. I might comment something about the card I’ve chosen, or about something they said in their profile. I often mention what book I’m reading or what movie I’ve recently seen/liked or what song I’m listening to or what the weather is like or what holiday is happening or whatever. Not so much because I think they care, but because I like when people write that sort of thing on their cards.
Received postcards vary HUGELY in what people write. Some write “Happy Postcrossing!” and that’s it. Some write very small and fill up the whole card with chatty things about themselves and their lives. Some remark on my surname or ask questions about it. Some tell me they’ve been to my state/country before. I got one card that said she was just about to meet her best friend for lunch and tell him she was in love with him; periodically I wonder how that turned out! A lot of people write the sort of things I write, which is where I got the idea for all those things.
I am super excited to hear people talking about Postcrossing. I have belonged for a long time, but kind of stopped, until Swistle inspired me again a few years ago. It helps that I adore buying postcards-I live to find the right one for my recipient.
I live in Alaska, which a lot of people are interested in, so I do talk about it a bit in my postcard. I also say a bit about me-it really depends on my mood. I will admit, some of my best postcards have been written under the influence of cheap champagne-for some reason it gets me totally in the mood to write, and I get this whole “we are the world” kind of feeling.
I love when people write about themselves, you are able to write in your profile what you might enjoy hearing about. I have connected with a few women, one in the UK, one in Germany-and we send postcards to each other during the year. One is a big Disney fan, she goes to Disneyland Paris, I go to WDW-and we send each other things from the parks.
Swistle, with people I am really interested in, or ones that just join, I always offer to send a postcard back. I send a message, asking if they want to send me their address, and get a card from Alaska.
I feel like I need to now know what happened with the person telling their best friend they loved them! Did it work out?
The one downside of Postcrossing-the international first class mail seems to go up so fast!
I love this! I have been sending postcards anonymously with short poems on them to a friend of mine who is ill (well, “anonymously,” she probably knows who it is.) I am really enjoying thinking about the sort of thing I’d like to say on a postcard. What fun. Where do you get the postcards? All kinds of little shops have them, don’t they?
Yes, it’s a real treasure hunt! Wallllmart has them, and sometimes a drugstore (CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, that kind of place) will have them (but often NOT), and Hallmark stores usually have them. Any touristy place will have them: we have a shop that sells local foods and souvenir shirts, and they’re a great source. I also order books/boxes of them from Amazon.com: I have a Pixar set, a Pantone set, a Sibley birds set, a set called The Art of Instruction that’s reproductions of classroom posters. It can get addictive: right now I have more postcards than I think I could ever send!
I have bought vintage postcard lots off ebay, always check out touristy shops, Walmart, and I do order them from amazon. I have boxed sets of Penguin Books Covers, Beatrix Potter, Vogue Covers, Vanity Fair Covers, Pixar, The Art of Disney, the Sibley Birds set. I also order postcard sets from the UK, so I have some from the National Gallery, which I love.
Swistle-how do you like the Art of Instruction postcards? Are they good ones? I absolutely agree with you, I probably have way more than I will ever send. Oh-I also order holiday ones from Zazzle.
“Hello, my name is Maureen-and I am addicted to postcards!”.
I do like the Art of Instruction ones, but they’re in French, which sometimes makes me feel as if I shouldn’t send them.
Oh, the idea of vintage ones sets my jaded, cinder-blackened heart a-flutter. I think I might have to sign up for this!
@martha – OMG!! That is terrible! I agree, what a way to start your day…!??! Eesh.
I am also interested in what you / others put on the Postcrossing post cards!
Do people really give a gift to their mail carrier? I’ve never done it and I don’t remember my parents doing it. Is it a thing?
They do! There are even special post-office thank-you cards the carriers use to write their notes of thanks! There are also regulations about it, but I forget what they are. It might just be that the gift can’t be worth more than $50, or something. I don’t remember it being anything I was in danger of doing accidentally.
So do you wait outside for the mail carrier to give the gift, or do you leave it in the mailbox?
I leave it in the mailbox. I do different things different years, according to whim. One year I was very keen on some wool socks I’d gotten from L.L. Bean, so I got her a couple of pairs. Another year I was doing plates of cookies/treats for a few people, so I did one for her too. Most years I do a gift card to Target, though, sometimes WITH a little plate of treats if I’m doing that for anyone else. If I do a gift card in an envelope, I write her name on the front (I wrote “Mail Carrier” before I knew her name) and put a stick-on bow on the envelope, so it doesn’t accidentally get put in with the outgoing mail.
I like buying gift cards from cardpool.com. sometimes I buy them for myself, sometimes as gifts. I have bought old navy, Lowes, and jc penney cards from them in the past and saved as much as 20%.
NINE. WEEKS. Shut. Up. Insert frantic breathing into a paper bag.
For listing, might I suggest Google Keep? I love it.
I take a different route to work just about every day…but not because I’m trying to elude someone who wants to harm me. It’s mainly because I usually run errands in the morning (gas, dry cleaners, etc).
And yes, that tip about taking your kids pictures daily? What a gruesome and horrifying way to live.
I’m glad other people think like this. I’m always pondering hypothetical scenarios, (not that I’ve ever actually changed my routine over it). The last time my husband was gone very late, I got thinking that if Something Very Bad happened to him, nothing would prevent the Bad Guy(s) from getting his address from his wallet, driving his car here and using his keys to come on in and surprise me, most unpleasantly. So of course by the time he finally DID get home I was in a hurry to determine it was actually him. The perils of an active imagination!
I’m intrigued by Postcrossing, but SPEAKING OF PARANOIA, I don’t know if I could just mail a random stranger my name and address. Even though a random stranger could go through our apartment complex’s recycling and come up with thirty names and addresses and BE RIGHT THERE IN MY COMPLEX AT ANY MOMENT.
My brain makes no sense.
I am squirrelly about many privacy-related things (I rarely discuss the WEATHER on my blog, lest it give clues to where I live), but Postcrossing doesn’t scare me. My address is available to the employees of every utility we use, to the employees of every online business we patronize, to the employees of every bank and credit card company we use, to the employees of every charity we donate to, to the employees of every catalog and junk mailing we receive, to the employees of every company that processes those mailings, to the employees of the schools our kids go to and the extracurriculars they attend, to the employees of the post office, to everyone in our physical proximity (all members of our town, anyone who drives by), etc., etc., etc. That in itself doesn’t seem like a risk factor. If someone in France or China or Finland gets my name and address so that they can send me a postcard, I don’t see how that increases my danger at all. Except for in the movie The Jerk, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone being targeted by random address—and if they were, there are so many phone books to randomly choose from.
Another factor is that when I SEND a postcard, that person does NOT have access to my address. Only people who send ME a postcard have my address (and none of them live in the United States). So when I say, “Hi, I’m [age], I live in [state/country], I have 5 children…” etc., that person (1) lives in another country and (2) knows only what state/country I live in: not my real name, not my town or street.
That’s why my irrational fear is just SO SILLY. Thanks for the perspective. I know, all the people everywhere, so many companies, have my address. I would like to someone to trust me to send them a postcard! I should trust others in the same way!
Allison, I don’t think you are being irrational at all, I had those same fears when I first started. Then I realized, these people actually do live in Finland, Russia, Greece-the odds of them showing up at my door at very, very, very small.
I know I sound like a commercial, but what I love about Postcrossing is you realize how similar we all are. We love our family, our pets, our books-we are so alike. I always tell my husband, if everyone did Postcrossing, the world would be a better place. For example, I don’t like the government of Russia right now, but the postcards I get from Russians are warm and wonderful. I feel like I am so much more accepting because of that.
People in other countries become very real!
You know, I think if you are, say, an activist or government official working in a context where it’s known you’re a likely target for a terrorist attack then — sure. And there are, actually, a few circumstances where I sort of follow this advice, for example, when I go for a run I often don’t know until 10 or 20 minutes before I start my run, if that, where I will be running (I often stop en route home from work, for example, so there are any of a number of places I can choose), and even once I start running, I don’t necessarily know which route exactly I will take (“Gee that hill ahead looks steep … turning left … NOW!”). As the hill example suggests, this isn’t entirely about safety, and of course it violates the rule (well, I violate the rule) that Someone Must Know Where I Am At All Times In Case Something Happens (however, I do carry my phone, so assuming it stayed with me when Something Bad Happened I believe I’d be fairly easy to track down, even if no one had much information about where to start looking. And of course I’m not too far from my car, which isn’t readily “findable” (in a has a phone sense, as it doesn’t), but is an identifiable kind of thing.
There was a situation in my town some years back where a woman was assaulted and killed while out running what I think was her regular route, by someone who targeted her “in that manner” (the “she always comes by here at more or less this time” manner), I believe. But I may be wrong, it may be that she was attacked simply because “various women run by here early in the morning, I’ll attack one of them.” So that may shape my “planning,” if you can call it that. But I do also like a change of scenery, and sometimes I feel up to hilly routes, others — not so much. And of course her circumstance (may she rest in peace) if it was the latter (“various women run by here…”) illustrates another tension which, you know, on the one hand Don’t Ever Go Out to Isolated Places and on the other hand — well, you know.
If anything, I feel like not having a predictable routine would make things LESS safe. Having a routine means that it’s easy to tell when something is out of the ordinary, and makes it easier to plan what to do should there be an actual emergency. But honestly, I don’t think it matters much either way.
I just wanted to let you know that you inspired me! :)
I just signed up for Postcrossing AND was also inspired to order cards online! I wouldn’t have thought to look online at all, but to my delight Etsy had a set of (wonderful and whimsical) artwork of various local attractions, by a local artist. (My city is in the prairies in Canada and is not large or touristy or especially artsy, so I am feeling really pleased by this find. :))
And as a side note (as I re-read this comment), I realize that “pleased” and “pleasing” were not used in my regular speech until I starting reading this blog!
Ha! I love it. IT’S CONTAGIOUS.