We get a lot of mail at our house.

I’m not saying we get big canvas bags from the post office, but we get a lot of mail. We don’t get one of those nifty plastic baskets with the post office logo on one side and “Property of the United States Postal Service” on the other side, but we get a lot of mail.

There are times when the box at the end of our driveway is full and the letter carrier has to bring the rest of it to the door and leave it on a chair on the porch. Why she just doesn’t bring it all to the porch, I will never know. This is how she has always done it and probably always will. Stuff the box to its breaking point and bring the remainder to the house.

I always thought she should just bring the whole lot to the porch if she doesn’t think it’s going to fit in the box. I asked her about this one day and she looked at me as if I had asked her something remarkably obscene.

We get a lot of packages. Friends and family from far away are always sending something to us. We occasionally order something online and the parcel service will leave it on the porch. Sometimes, in the name of personal security, they will attempt in their own special way to disguise the package to ward off any potential party from absconding with it when we are not home.

I especially enjoy when they try to hide it under the welcome mat. Our welcome mat is quite large, and is shaped like a crab and says “An Old Crab Lives Here” on it. It’s cute and my wife thought it was clever when she bought it.

When the parcel service delivered a particularly large package, they creatively tucked it under the mat so it looked exactly like what it was: A 37-inch television with a big crab on top of it.

I understand the need for them to worry about the delivered parcel. We had a package stolen last year. I hope the thief knows to consult a physician if his condition does not change after four hours.

We get a lot of catalogs. I don’t know single soul who still orders from a catalog anymore. Sears stopped printing theirs 20 years ago, but scores of other companies still print one and send it to anyone who wants one. We once received a catalog of catalogs. It was a catalog that allowed you to pick and choose catalogs you wanted to receive from a wide assortment of companies.

We get catalogs from Lillian Vernon, Harriet Carter and a bunch of other companies that are named after women who never existed. We get food catalogs from junk food to gourmet. My favorite is the Swiss Colony, which still offers a gift package of a thousand pounds of meat, cheese, and chocolate that will please any family of 1,100 people.

We get travel brochures. We get tourism packages from all 50 states and the Canadian provinces. I am happy to know that every year, the state of Delaware thinks enough of my family to send me an updated paper map of their fine state, knowing darn well that I have a GPS and a smartphone that has a navigation app on it.

In addition to the state maps, we get cruise brochures. Most of them are little magazines with pictures of the ships and their destinations. Some of the more highbrow ones send DVDs for us to watch. Thank you, cruise lines. We watch the DVDs and don’t have to take the cruises. It’s like watching “The Love Boat” without having to deal with Gopher.

We do get the important mail. We get the electric bill and the phone bill and the medical bills. Our younger daughter subscribes to a couple of magazines and she thinks they are pretty important. Most of this mail is buried under a stack of cruise catalogs and state maps.

We are rapidly approaching the season where the holiday cards will start arriving. We still get cards and letters from distant family members who are not Internet-savvy. I like the idea of holiday cards and we enjoy seeing the different cards and seeing the handwriting of our loved ones and friends. It’s nice to know someone actually took a few minutes to write a little message in a card and mail it out.

We hang all of our Christmas cards on our fireplace mantel throughout the holidays as part of our Christmas decorations. It reminds us of all the folks we hold dear to our hearts. Except for the insurance guy. We like his card because it comes with a pocket calendar.

For my generation, receiving something in the mail was a big deal. Nowadays, most of the mail is junk and we leave other stuff to social media. I still get a little burst of excitement when I go to the mailbox and hope there might be something exciting awaiting my discovery.

Today it was my phone bill, a note from my eye doctor reminding me of an appointment I had forgotten, a sheet of Pizza Hut coupons, and deep inside the box was a treasure from an old friend.

A new map of Delaware.

Baltimore native Joe Weaver is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.

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Joe Weaver

Contributing Columnist