In every person's life, one must endure a slew of changes. Births, marriages, deaths, TV shows coming and going, sports teams rising and falling, and enough fashion frenzies to make a person want to quit keeping up and fade away. But just because you decide to stop evolving with the times doesn't mean the times will stop evolving. While change is a dollar word for politicians in the wake of social turmoil, it will eventually be the death of us all. Eventually, we will settle into a niche we enjoy for a decade or two and wake up to find nothing is the way it used to be. Rip Van Winkle with our eyes open. But enough generalization! Let's get on with this week's example.

I received a letter in my mail box from the Post Office which took me a little by surprise. It basically told me I should no longer put the mail box flag up when I have mail to be sent. Putting the red flag up is just asking for people to steal my mail, the letter said, so I should not do that any more. They went on to inform me that the red flag going up does not guarantee pick up. If I don't have any incoming mail, the post man will not pick up my letters going out. In fact, the letter said I should put my outgoing mail in official blue post office mail boxes or go to the post office myself.

When it comes to the post office, I rarely complain about anything. I don't gripe when they bump up mail prices a penny or three every few years. I was pleased that the post office was making a profit. How many government agencies can boast that?

But something happens when a business starts making money hand over foot. They stop caring. It's not like I put out letters every week to be sent, but I enjoyed the small perk of being able to go out to the mail box in the morning, throw a couple letters and a couple bills in, raise the flag, and have the mail get picked up.

I remember my mom explaining to me as a child what purpose the red flag was. Now, people are potentially stealing my mail, the red flag is meaningless, and the postman isn't coming around if I don't have any mail. They don't still expect me to tip them or bake them cookies at Christmas time, do they?

It's not that the post office is asking too much from me to go find one of their boxes. I will comply because, you know, I want to be in compliance. It's just lame, that's all. The more streamlined and chain linked businesses become, the less personality they exert. Instead of being the guy who stops in to pick up a CD every now and then, I'm customer #972 during the shift. Instead of having a table saved for me in the corner of a restaurant, I settle for something in smoking because that's all that's available. Instead of being the guy who raises the red flag and sends mail from his house, I don't have any mail so there's no reason to slow down.

I didn't think it was an inconvenience for the postman to check my mailbox even if I had no incoming mail. I'm pretty sure if I don't have mail, then somebody on either side of me does. Besides, I almost always have mail thanks to credit cards companies, magazines and just plain pointless crap that the postman seems to have no complaint giving to me. Do the postman give letters to credit card companies saying I don't need another credit card and to stop bugging me? No, they give me a letter saying the red flag means nothing.

And that's what bothers me the most. The red flag means nothing. It's still attached to my mail box, I can still put it up or down, but nobody cares. Pretty soon, mailboxes will stop having the red flags attached to them (I must admit I have an old, unattractive metal mail box, but I don't plan on getting a new one). The red flag will disappear without much commotion or fervent debate. Some day in about ten or twenty years, someone may say "Hey, remember when they used to have those things on mailboxes to signal the postman if you had mail you wanted to send? What happened to those?"

The Post Office decided the red flag didn't matter any more, and this week, they sent a letter to tell me.

Chris Jungle contemplated being a postman, but then he read some Charles Bukowski.