For the past 6 months I have been leading a secret double life. I am a superhero.

I wake in the early hours of the morning, while the world sleeps, while evil stirs. I stand before my mirror, slip on my costume – a sleek fitted red shirt, blue tights, a cape. I stretch my muscles, ready to roam the streets.

My super-powers?

The power to make dogs go wild on sight. The power to make small children jump up and down with delight. The power to quietly sneak onto private property with stealth. The power of above average-health.

My friends know me as Daniel Baird. But when I suit up, when I put on that red shirt. When I don that cape. I am no longer Daniel Baird. I am no longer weak – I gain the strength of at least TWO 9 year old boys. I am no longer an idiot – I gain intelligence at least comparable to that of a dolphin. I become my alter-ego. I become…

Postman

Do you need a letter delivered apathetically by somebody that doesn’t give a damn? Postman is there!! Do you need a large package delivered sometime between 7am and 5pm, but probably at the exact moment you step into the shower? Postman is there!! Do you need somebody to wake you up at 8am on a Saturday morning because a packet wont fit through your letter box? Do you need junk mail? Shopping catalogues? Pizza menus? Do you need a torn birthday card? Postman is there!!

Whether rain, snow, heat or gale. Postman is there!!

Or rather. I would have been there, because eventually reality set in. I realised I wasn’t a superhero. I wasn’t Postman (upper-case “P”), I was a postman (lower-case “P”). I didn’t have any super powers. I didn’t have a costume. I had an uninspiring job delivering mail.

The word uninspiring is apt. Inspiration has to come from somewhere, and posting mail through doors for 4 hours each day isn’t that somwhere. Monotony destroys creativity. The more monotonous your life, the less your need to think. The less you think, the more challenging it becomes to do those things that require thinking. Thinking becomes tough.

From the moment I started the job I stopped thinking. My enthusiasm for pretty much everything started to wane. I was Lazyman. My superpower was laziness. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to go out with friends, I stopped doing all of the enjoyable things I liked to do. I didn’t read a book in months. My attention span was at an all time low. My energy was gone.

I only had enough energy for miniscule tasks, like posting mail. Anything else was too much, making a full meal was too much, I ate nothing but sandwiches for months. I didn’t think all day at work, so my mind wasn’t ready to think afterwards. Worst of all I stopped writing – you possibly noticed – because writing was too taxing, too much work. I became a zombie. I clicked into my routine, my life was barely conscious. I would drift to work, drift through my day, drift home, drift to sleep. Everything I did was subconscious. My life was a one without thought.

Then one day I ran out of elastic [rubber] bands.

To a postman, the elastic band is more than a simple piece of stationery. Each day the Royal Mail goes through 2 million red elastic bands, all used to bundle up mail. But despite this they are still a rare commodity. Postal workers hoard the bands in secret stashes to ensure there’s always a steady supply so that they never run out. I started my own stash. Elastic bands became valuable to me. I always had one eye on my bands. I started to cup them in my hands and purr the words “my preciousssss.” Until the day I snapped too many and I ran out.

Now the only way to get more elastic bands if you’re a postman, is to steal them off somebody else. While a co-worker is away from his desk, you need to sneak over, grab as many bands from his stash as possible, then run back to your own desk.

It was still early in my elastic band stealing career. I didn’t know the tricks. So I watched as a co-worker beside me walked away from his own fitting. I snuck over. I quickly started to search for his bands, and when I couldn’t see any in immediate sight I started to deepen my investigation. Each desk had one drawer, I opened his and started to rifling through it, finally finding the treasure: hidden under a piece of paper, the largest collection of elastic bands in the world. I wanted to jump into the bands and swim in them. But no time! I filled my hands as quickly as possible, then I heard a loud voice behind me.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?”

I turned around. My co-worker was standing in front of me, a thin middle-aged man with thick glasses and a buzz cut. The type of guy that looks like he was once in the army but got kicked out for being too crazy (which is pretty crazy). He pushed himself right up into my face. I was scared and I fumbled an excuse “I – um, I just, I needed some elastic bands…” He sneered at me “WELL YOU’RE NOT TAKING ANY ELASTIC BANDS OFF MY FUCKING DESK! THOSE ARE MY FUCKING ELASTIC BANDS! FIND YOUR OWN ELASTIC BANDS SOMEWHERE ELSE! YOU’RE NOT HAVING MINE!!!”

I squeaked an apology, putting the bands back on his desk and slumping away. For a few moments I filled completely with rage. I swore at my co-worker in my mind. Why should he have all the fucking elastic bands? What the fuck was I supposed to do? Why did he have to be so fucking mean? Fuck him. I called him everything I could think of. Fucking this, fucking that.

Then I caught myself in the anger, a short moment of self-realisation. I was shocked at what I could see. My life had degenerated to the point that I was feeling genuine, deep anger over elastic bands. I started to laugh to myself. The whole thing was absurd. They were just elastic bands.

I realised I was no longer in control of myself, I had subconsciously just become like everybody around me. Not focusing or thinking. I was becoming petty, mean and angry about insignificant things. Soon I wouldn’t want to share my own bands. My preciouses.

As the days went by I started to really look around me at my co-workers. I realised that the longer they had been working there, the more they had lost sight of reality. They no longer knew what was and wasn’t of importance. They had stopped thinking of elastic bands as something to tie up mail. They thought of these little pieces of rubber as a sign of power and authority. If you had the most bands, if you could protect your bands against everybody else, then you had some small piece of power. Nobody else.

None of this was conscious, no thinking was involved, it just happened. Like the children in Lord of the Flies, we didn’t become crazed elastic band hoarders overnight. It was gradual. Slowly creeping onto you until it seemed like normal behaviour.

I have seen grown men swear, out-loud, in a rage, because somebody else has told them they have to deliver one more package. I have seen postmen throwing packages against the wall because their elastic bands kept snapping. I have seen men – actual adults, with children – almost get into fist fights over having to deliver a few more letters. And I have seen how the majority of people I was working with thought this was all normal behaviour, I even thought it was normal behaviour myself for a while.

But it’s only normal when you don’t think about it, when you lose your life to a sub-conscious routine. When you no see the world rationally, and you give importance to unimportant things, like elastic bands.

Millions of people do this their whole life. Drift through life subconsciously. Never thinking. Never knowing they aren’t thinking. Losing sight of so many important things. Becoming attached to so many insignificant things without knowing why.

Then one day they hang up their cape. They look around them. They look at themselves. They wonder why those rubber bands were so important. And they quit.

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Photo 1 is titled Now All I need is a Cape by Zach Disner on Flickr.
Photo 2 is titled Rubber Bands by mattscoggin on Flickr.