Addendum.

A few weeks before Christmas, I went to the post office in the city to mail out my mom’s gift (an FDR bookmark and an Eleanor Roosevelt bookmark, both purchased at the FDR memorial when I was in the D.C. area for a conference).

(Since my mom likes the Roosevelts and always reads books about them, I thought she’d be stoked, and so I wanted to give the bookmarks to her early.)

I also was mailing in my feedback to the prefab survey for the upcoming Catholic synod on the family, and when I told the (black) postlady that I also had one letter for Vatican City, she was like, “Where?”.

“Vatican City,” I was like.  “The country where the pope lives.”

“Oh,” she was like, “I thought you were talking about some club downtown or something, they all got names like that.  I couldn’t figure out why you’d need to mail them a letter and why you were thinking I had the address!”, and then at that she laughed.