My Personal Protest

I have several pet peeves. One of these is going to my mailbox, finding it packed with mail, and upon sorting it find that most of it is junk mail. Almost daily there is an offer for a credit card or for a subscription to a magazine or a plea for donations. For those over 65, insurance companies continually bombard us with offers for medicare supplement policies. Soon it will be political ads. Then there are the many catalogs. I don't know how the JC Penney Co. stays in business with all the catalogs and flyers we get, almost daily, from them. Now how to you stop "spam" in your snail mail? I wish I could put a spam filter on my mailbox. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is anything that you can really do to stop it. If you've been a longtime reader of my blog you've read about my continuing battle with the Republican National Committee and the Heritage Association who continue to send pleas for money to my dad, at my address, even though he has been dead for 25 months. My return letters to them, sent to them at their expense, have been ignored now for two years, even though my letters have been creative. But I've decided to expand my personal protest to others, who, like them, enclose postage paid return envelopes. Incidentally, most credit card companies include such an envelope. I now take time to write a response on their forms, often as simple as "thank you for your kind offer in your junk mail." Today I received another one from an insurance company warning me that this was their FINAL OFFER. I replied by saying that this was my FINAL REJECTION. Then I take everything they sent, including the envelope that they sent it in, and stuff these into their return envelope. I then tape it shut . This makes it heavier than usual, probably requiring more postage. Without putting a return address on the outside of the envelope, I drop it off at the mailbox so I don't need to pay the postage. Now I think this accomplishes two things. First, the company will need to pay the extra return postage and in my thinking this is a fair cost for bothering me. Second, it raises some extra income for the postal system and it appears that they badly need the funds. Unfortunately, the only thing I know to do with the catalogs, ads, and extra junk mail is to file it - in our circular file. Maybe you want to join me in this personal campaign. It might not accomplish anything, but it does send a signal to them that I am tired of spam snail mail. Now if I could only invent a spam filter for my mailbox. Or, maybe I just have too much time on my hands.