How I Closed Down the Falls Church Post OfficeDon't be surprised if you see my photo one of these days on a 'Wanted' poster at the Falls Church Post Office. That's because I'm the suspicious character who left his briefcase there Friday afternoon, causing the place to be closed down as more than 30 Postal Service employees and about a dozen customers were evacuated and forced to wait outside in the cold for an hour while Postmaster Rita Richmond tried to determine whether someone had left a bomb. But no, it was just my ten-year-old black Schlesinger briefcase containing nothing more than my Congressional press pass, a Christmas card from the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, a copy of The Hill with my commentary on the death of former Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and Xeroxed copies of some 15 articles and columns I wrote during a recent trip to Iraq. (Ironically, one of those articles was about the constant danger American soldiers face from roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices.) While freely admitting my guilt, I plead innocent of any malicious intent.Here's what happened: I was standing in a long line, waiting to mail a 2006 calendar to friends in Denmark , a Christmas tradition we've followed ever since our younger daughter lived with them as an exchange student many years ago. The 11 x 16-inch calendar and another large envelope I was sending to a friend in Wyoming were in the briefcase, but I didn't have an envelope for the former, so I set the briefcase on the glass-topped table while I got a large bubble mailing envelope. Just then, postal clerk Lisa Hsu beckoned me to the counter, where she told me the airmail postage to Copenhagen for the one-pound, 3.4-ounce package would be $9.85, with an additional $2.29 for the envelope. I said fine, then discovered I had left the address at home and explained I would have to call my wife on my cell phone to get it. Ms. Hsu said she'd hold the package while I got the address, and she waited on another customer while I stepped outside to call my wife. Then I returned with the address and wrote it on the envelope and paid her. But in my haste to finish other end-of-the-year errands before going to my office in downtown Washington I left, forgetting all about my briefcase - an increasing tendency toward forgetfulness on my part, my wife later pointed out. Several hours later, Postmaster Richmond called my wife to ask if I was the person who had just mailed a calendar to Denmark . When she said I was, Ms. Richmond said I had left my briefcase there. My wife offered to retrieve it, but was told that was against Postal Service policy and it could only be released to me. So my wife gave her my office number and Ms. Richmond left me a message. When I returned her call, she said my briefcase had "caused some security concerns," but didn't offer any details. I apologized and said that was understandable, given the post-9/11 security worries, and told her I would pick it up on Saturday morning. When I arrived shortly before noon , this time with another large package to mail to a relative in Albuquerque , N.M. , there was another long line, but somehow, I ended up at Ms. Hsu's station again. After paying the postage ($5.40, priority mail), I casually mentioned that I wanted to pick up a briefcase I had left the day before. "Oh, you're the one who caused all the problems," she replied in a voice loud enough to be heard by her fellow workers and half the people standing in line behind me. "What do you mean?" I said as the clerk next to her declared, "Tell him what happened." Ms. Hsu graciously returned my briefcase and I apologized again for all the trouble I had caused, thanked her profusely and sheepishly departed with a furtive glance at the sheaf of 'Wanted' posters to see if my photo was already among them. Anyway, what happened was that shortly after I left, someone noticed my unattended briefcase and alerted postal workers. As Ms. Richmond explained when I called her on Tuesday, "It really does disrupt things when something like this happens. In this day and age we're living in, we have to be safe rather than sorry." She said she had ordered the 32 people working there at the time and 12 to 14 customers standing in line to leave the building while she called the Postal Inspection Service to determine whether the briefcase should be X-rayed. "But I was able to back up the security camera and see you," she explained, and then we were able to locate the package you mailed and get your home address and call your wife. Fortunately, everything worked out O.K." However, she noted that this isn't the first time this has happened. "It would be nice if it were, but it's not. The last time was at the beginning of summer when somebody left a backpack." One final ironic note: Several years ago, well before 9/11, our Danish friends came to visit us, bringing with them their five-year-old son, who, they explained, had become restive during the long flight from Copenhagen and had created a scene upon arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York . "The immigration official treated us as if we were harboring a terrorist," the boy's mother explained. To this day, we still refer to the boy, now fully grown, as "the little Danish terrorist." Now, I guess he can call me "the elderly American terrorist." |
