Posted.

I'm not going to say that the National Post Office Museum was the lamest museum I've ever been to (that award goes to the miniature Israel model that we once spent half a day at,) but it really let me down. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but let's just say it was not a philatelist's dream come true.

Apparently the Museum of History used to have a post office section, but the collection was simply too large. So the Smithsonian found a new place to contain all of the important historical and cultural artifacts. And important they are. I read about the history of the mail truck and the mail train. I saw a collection of different mail-drop boxes from around the world. I watched a mother lecture her 12 year old daughter about the rarity of irregular stamp perforation patterns while her daughter typed on her SideKick.

“Do you see here Becky? At this point they actually had to use a hand rolling perforator, that's how you can tell these are special. Do you see how the line wavers a bit over here?”

“Yeah mom, that's great. Carly and Autumn are going to a movie tonight. I'm going with them.”

“Well, we'll see about that. Oh, look over here. It's the upside down 'Jenny!'”

It was obvious that the museum designers were really trying to stretch for anything interesting. There was an entire wing of the museum devoted to the Postal Inspectors. These are the police of the postal system, Kojak types who inspect things like mail fraud and identity theft. They had the actual handcuffs that the Unabomber was arrested with. There was a replica of one of the HazMat suits that inspectors had to wear during the big anthrax scare. There was even a great shot of postal inspectors boarding a helicopter. On the back of their blue windbreakers in big yellow letters it said; Police: Postal Inspector. I'm not quite sure who this would intimidate, but I bet it has something to do with the Trystero System.