PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD

Clearly, Owl had been dealing with delivery people. (If you've never read Winnie the Pooh, you should.)

Monday, as I was thinking about scheduling a run to the store for paper, I got an email from Staples offering me a case at a good price. I also had a coupon for $25 off an internet order, so I ordered paper and some other office supplies, expecting them to be delivered on Tuesday.

Tuesday, I was printing a copy of the music for the West Gallery workshop, from time to time, and hoping the paper supply would hold out until the delivery truck arrived. In the afternoon, the doorbell rang, and instead of the paper, it was a package from Amazon with the least useful 4 of the 8 items I'd ordered last week.

Previously when I've ordered from Staples, the truck has arrived in the morning, so I went online to see what the status of the delivery was, and it said the truck had left it on my front porch in the morning.

I went out and looked on all my neighbors' front porches, and there was no case of paper. So I called Staples, and they asked the delivery person, who assured them he had left it on my front porch, and that he had rung the doorbell.

At about 6 PM, I heard a knock on my door (I was downstairs packing for the workshop -- I can hear a knock when I'm downstairs, but there's no chance at all of hearing it when I'm upstairs).

It was my downstairs neighbor. The packages had been left in front of his door, and he'd needed to move them in order to get out. So he hadn't rung the doorbell (his doesn't work, so he assumes that nobody else's does, either), or called me, or emailed me.

In addition to the two boxes from Staples, there was another box delivered by the UPS person, who had also not rung the doorbell.

In the end, it turned out that enough people did print copies of music for the workshop, so getting the paper earlier would just have meant I'd have killed more trees than I had to.

But I'm going to make myself WOL-type placards. Here's the section from Winnie the Pooh, if you want it in isolation:

Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else's, or seemed so to Bear, because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a notice which said:

PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.

Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:

PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.

These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTERED TOAST.

Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud voice, "Owl! I require an answer! It's Bear speaking." And the door opened, and Owl looked out.

"Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?"

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