"Hi. I'd like to send this registered mail, please." "Registered mail? Postage as well? Do you want a return receipt? To you best knowledge, does this package contain hazardous or dangerous material? Do want stamps?" "Yes. Yes. No. No. No thank you. ... Huh?!" "We have to say it now." [Looks around, checks to make sure not at the airport by accident.] "Personally, I think it's overboard." "Huh?!" "Your letter should get there by Monday. That'll be $2.67." "Um ... do you need my passport too? . . . . . . . . . . For no good reason, I thought of Catherine Cheng today. She was so cool. She was quite pretty, and I had some fun hanging with her in high school. Or rather, trying to hang with her, she was never around, or with her boyfriend a lot. I should have asked her to prom (except, of course, for that whole boyfriend situation), and tried in vain to get her to crash it. I felt bad inviting her to my going away picnic at the New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park, as she was the only one there not in my tight social circle (she spent a lot of time alone at the far end of the picnic blanket). We had some great emails during college, always trying to get her to ask out her crush-of-the-months. She was so cool: living off campus with cooler guys in Montreal (McGill college), while I still shlepped it out at the engineering dorm (of all god-forsaken places). I looked so forward to meeting up with her again when I came back to New York after all these years (and no, I am not still carrying a torch for her. She's just damn cool). And then I got word she had joined a cult. And that things had gotten worse. And then I got a little sick in the stomach, because she had been so cool. At the very least her family's story will stay up for all to see. Damn you Swami Satchidananda! And to hell with Yogaville too!