At precisely 6:58 a.m., the clink of glass bottles tapped our porch like a gentle percussion solo. At 7:31 a.m., the flap of our mailbox closed with the satisfaction of a paperback novel. To the untrained eye, these were ordinary sounds. To our neighborhood, they were the overture to a saga of logistics, lactose, and letters.
My wife loves mornings. She also loves calcium and correspondence. To me, a simple man chained to spreadsheets and florescent lighting, this seemed wholesome.
Neighbors began to notice a pattern. The milkman, known for a signature wrist-flick that placed bottles with Olympic precision, started lingering. Minutes later, the mailman—a rectangle-slinging demigod—would arrive with a purposeful stride. To most, this was delivery. To our porch, this was destiny.
Meanwhile, I excelled at office culture. I crushed Q3. I earned a lanyard. I posted in Slack about “work-life balance” while reheating leftovers next to an unplugged ficus.
One evening, my wife delivered a sentence as delicately as a certified letter and as heavy as a crate of whole milk: “We’re having a baby.” I cried the tasteful kind of cry associated with premium cable dramas.
| Clue | Suggests Milkman | Suggests Mailman |
|---|---|---|
| Baby yawns at 7:00 a.m. | Milk delivery time | Postal stretch time |
| Prefers white onesies | Milk aesthetic | Uniform-adjacent |
| Smiles at envelopes | Unlikely | Strongly suggests mailman |
It happened on a Tuesday. The milk truck and the mail truck arrived simultaneously, their drivers meeting on the porch in a silent showdown. My wife set down a neutral offering: a glass of milk and a letter opener.
One night, after the baby fell asleep surrounded by circulars arranged like snowflakes, I sat with my wife on the porch. The air smelled faintly of fresh paper and colder-than-necessary milk. “Do you wish things were simpler?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Life delivers what it delivers.”
The milkman still swings by. The mailman still salutes the dog. And the baby? The baby claps whenever a truck passes. Biology is one thing; fatherhood, it turns out, is a full-time delivery.