Through the use of technology, as adults, we receive much of our mail through email but as kids we received all of our mail via the Postal Service and mailbox. I can remember some days waiting for the mailman to come just to see if he had anything for me. I can even remember the days when my mom had me go and check the mailbox just to see if any mail was delivered to the house.

Then one day I actually got a chance to put the mail in the mailbox. I was excited since I actually got to play an important role in the mail process. The process, as I was taught, has always been the same.

When you have properly addressed and stamped an envelope you then brought it to the mailbox and raised the mailbox flag up (this indicated to the mailman that there was mail to pickup). The mailman would come, open the box, take the mail from the box, put in the new mail and lower the flag. This has always seemed like a straight forward process until one day I went to check mail and there wasn't any mail.

I thought, "why did I have to walk to the mailbox if there wasn't any mail?" Isn't there a better way for us to know that we do not have mail"? Then I thought about the process and came up with this:

Instead of us having to raise the flag on the mailbox, indicating the mail pickup, why not have the mailman raise the flag when he drops off the mail? This would indicate, to us, that there is mail for us to pick and we could get it at our convenience. Then I thought again - the mailman would not know which homes to stop at to pick up mail.

As you see, the process is not perfect and someone always has to do the work. I prefer to have the mailman raise up the flag when we have mail. What do you think?