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I've never actually met Pauline, but we keep in frequent touch. She knows when all my family members' birthdays are - because of all the cards she receives - and I let her know when her tax refund check arrives.

My accidental pen pal and I have mistakenly gotten each other's mail, on and off, for 10 years, and there is no logical reason. We're on different streets, in different developments, and have different last names. All we share is a ZIP code and house number.

Still, no amount of complaining has ever fixed this odd mix-up, so we just live with it. Pauline wishes my daughter had a happy birthday. And I promise to be on the lookout for the missing packages destined for her son, the missionary. That's how it is.

Given this built-in level of inconvenience, it therefore wasn't hard to feel for customers in another ZIP code who recently learned that Friendly Post Office is moving. The problem? There isn't one. Everything works.

"I don't want it to move. I like it here," Bill Atchison said Thursday after moving swiftly through the line. "They're very friendly and very nice. There's no problem."

"It's fast," added Carol Ingram, who was in a hurry, and didn't have time for the serpentine, out-the-door lines at West Market or Murrow Boulevard. "It's convenient."

In a display window next to the best-selling Frank Sinatra stamp (and not-so-best-selling "American Journalists" series) was an official notice that the drably outdated post office is moving, probably this fall.

The two locations being considered are the Shops at Friendly, next to the Jumbo Mega-Teeter, or closer to Barnes & Noble, in a space that used to be a shoe store. Either of which will probably be OK, if only a little harder to get to.

But simply leaving it alone is not an option. If a thing is working, something's got to be done about it.

Urban alligators

Meanwhile, I don't know if it was the heat wave or people being forced to choose between regular unleaded and Johnny Walker Black, but some readers of this space just haven't been in the mood for jokes.

It started with last week's shocking discovery in Hamilton Lakes of the urban alligator, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the yard decoration we bought at Garden Ridge.

"Is this some kind of JOKE?" the first caller of the day said, after reading the headline but not the story.

Wrote Daryl Adams: "If your boss is a practical joker I guess you got the last laugh. Or maybe you have a great boss ..." (You hit the nail on the head, Daryl. No, seriously.)

B. Avery had a question: "How was that sale at Belk's?"

Observed Pete Petrea: "I didn't know there is more than one Hamilton Lakes. I live in less-affluent Hamilton Hills where NOTHING is exciting."
The writer of an unsigned e-mail noted that the lesser bodies of water are named "Little Lake Euphemia" and "Big Lake Euphemia."

Then again, he or she might simply be pulling my leg.

But evidently what really wasn't funny was guest columnist/ghost writer Melody Singer's roundup Wednesday of off-the-beaten-path summer day camps for kids.

The fact that the camps were somewhat labor-intensive wasn't a deterrent. Callers didn't blink an eye at the idea of children being used to spread mulch and Roundup in city parks, sort recycling material or work at day care centers.

No, apparently the summer camp crunch is hitting parents so hard that some even wanted to know where kids could really paint a house as part of Singer's "Petite Picassos" camp.

The bad news: I have tried to locate Melody Singer, and she does not appear to exist. Worse still, I'm not sure she's a real psychologist, either.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com