The bell dings its dongs at four-thirty in the afternoon and prompts the door cam to notify my phone. I know that my daily package of Prime has arrived. I may have to work late, but I know that my brown box will be there waiting for me when I get home.
I no longer try to remember what I ordered two days in the past. It comes and, when I get home from work, I will accept it. I know that whatever is in that brown box with the Amazon tape will be something that my past self wanted. Wanted enough the hit the ‘1-click ship’ ™ button.
So I get home, fill my hands with the mail, unlock the door and kick the box through over the door jam. And hurt my toe through my loafers. It did not move; the box is heavier than usual. Dense. Recovering my footing, I drop the mail on the counter, shrug off my shoulder bag and return to the door. Bending at the knees, I try tipping the box up on one edge to get my fingers under it, but the box won’t tip. What did I order?
It is not a large box: maybe fifteen inches along the long edge, a foot along the short one and maybe six inches high. A typical Amazon box. Usually, they contain something like the argyle socks that caught my eye or a trivet for the stirring spoon from making a mess of the kitchen counter. This is not socks. This is not a trivet. This is something more than those. Something that I don’t remember. The box contains a mystery.
I push. I prod. I heave and kick. The cardboard dents, but the box will not shift. I could look at my order history, but that feels like cheating. Instead, I grab a steak knife from the kitchen and open the box on the door step. The knife pulls through the string reinforced tape on the two ends with the usual ease, but when I push down to rip the seam along the top the knife barely penetrates enough to part the tape. I fold back the flaps and stare. There are none of the air filled pillows. No packing peanuts or crushed paper. The inside is filled side-to-side, top-to-bottom with an amber solid. It is semi-transparent and I can just make out the packing slip at the bottom, but not well enough to make out the words. I poke at the stuff with my finger. It feels like plastic. I can dent it a little with my finger nail and can see where the knife scored it as I had opened the tape. It does not look that heavy.
Finally, I cheat. Reaching into my back pocket, I pull out my phone. I open the Amazon app and pull up the order history. Scrolling past the last two days’ history, I finally see what I had purchased: Liquid Nails™. I had planned on using it to put up some tin roofing squares I had purchased last week. And, as I always do, I had checked the Amazon ‘Frustration Free Packaging’ option. Not tubes of calking, just the Liquid Nails, no longer liquid, but adhered to my front step.
I am not free of frustration.
