I thought that West Hollywood, the place I now call home, had cornered the market on stress.  But last Wednesday, while on a vacation in the slower and more relaxed town of Watsonville, located in the rural Pajaro Valley, I was abruptly proved wrong.

            It happened like this.  My dad, a gent in his seventies, went to the downtown Watsonville post office to pick up mail from his P.O. box.  Meantime I cadged up to the first window to ask a postal employee some quick details about submitting a passport application for my dad.  (It's high time he get a passport.  He'll need one to go to Canada and Mexico next year, and maybe the year after next, he'll need one to go to Los Angeles.)

            Already aware of postal clerks' reputation for short fuses and quick trigger fingers, I fully expected to be scowled at and pointed to the back of the line.

            Instead, the man in postal blue gestured that I wait till he finished with his current customer.  Afterward, he put up the "closed" sign to attend to me in peace and tranquility.  That little sign was the tipping point.  It was enough to set off one tall fellow in line.  He shouted over, "Hey, buddy, next time, wait in line like everyone else!"

            It's odd that he didn't see fit to shout at the postal employee, "Shame on you for providing answers to all his questions, and disproving the clichés about post-office workers."

            I uttered a lame "I apologize" in the complainer's general direction.  My gaze averted the increasingly hostile glances of other folks in the line that stretched all the way to the first wall poster, depicting a mother reading mail, and in big letters above, "LOVE brought to you by the U.S. Postal Service."

            "When you fill out your papers, you'll need an appointment to execute the passport," the clerk told me.  (What the passport had done to receive such harsh punishment, I'll never know.)  "I don't have an appointment open for another three weeks.  You can go to the main post office in Santa Cruz or the county building on Ocean Street and execute it immediately if you want to wait in line for two hours."

            My dad had waited fifty years to get a passport, he could wait another three weeks.  Inside I was thinking, "hurry, Mr. Postal Clerk, somebody in the line is gonna kill me if this goes on any longer."  The clerk slowly pulled out a binder and slowly penned in my dad's name.  Thankfully, he didn't ask how you spell Miller.

            All said and done, getting an appointment for my dad to "execute" the passport took all of forty seconds--albeit an excruciating forty seconds.  By the time I walked away, the tall complainer was already at the head of the line.  So what was the big deal?

            As I met my dad in the lobby, clutching his mail, there came the coup de grâce.  A runty guy exiting the post office walked past and, just before going out the door, chirped at me: "Boss, next time wait in line!" 

            Indeed, after this adventure in postal rage--revealing the customers to be ruder and more belligerent than the clerks--I pondered how behavior is contagious.  It can be good behavior or bad.  If you give a beggar a coin, others are ten times more likely to open their hearts and wallets.  Or one person gripes, it launches a dozen other complaints.

            I'll tell you one thing, Watsonville has entered the big leagues, and showed itself on a par with the metropolis when it comes to outrage boiling onto the surface.  Nobody can deny we've now got a substantial quantity of that big-city import, "being in a hurry."

            With this and the new five-story parking garage that's going up, Watsonville has nothing more to envy of the big city.  Based on a small sampling last Wednesday morning, I'd say a number of people are ready to "go postal" at the slightest provocation, which puts us at the forefront of America's leading urban centers, rage-wise.  I'd sure hate to see what would happen if I cut off one of these folks on the Hollywood freeway.