the notice of rating

i studied and studied, the tests becoming more and more automatic. i was ordering and reordering street names, people's names in my head unconsciously. i was checking and double checking what i was reading in the newspaper, automatically proof reading the columns. studying for the post office entrance exam is alot like military training. it trains you to do things automatically and without hesitation and to do things efficiently. i felt like i was all that i could be, this was it, the post office had to have me now! i was a breed apart from the other lowly people around me. i was on my way to being a civil servant! i was going to be one of the few, the proud, the postal workers!
and then the day came. reveille sounded in my head and i arose in the still dark at 4 am, showered, dressed, ate and laced up my sneakers. i was doing a forced run today and i had to be ready to hit bullseye after bullseye. i was being watched today. i was one of the few, the chosen few. i drove for an hour to reach the exam. when i got there, i was to park in a state office building parking garage. the traffic! everyone was working today at their state civil servant jobs. well, i was one of the few. i was trying out for the post office and that was harder than anything that these state employees had taken.
i walked up to the line... and the line was four deep. thirty people in each queue. i presented id and my form and was cheerily greeted and told to take a seat inside. there must have been 300 people in that auditorium. so much for thinking that i was one of the few chosen to take the entrance exam. well, that increased the competition slightly, but it did not deter me. i mean, how many jobs were available? how many post offices were there in the world? i sat at a table shared with one other exam taker and arranged my three sharpened no. 2 pencils in front of me. people looked nervous, people looked confident, people looked bored, tired, sleepy, on edge, prepared and under-prepared. i wasn't worried. i was ready and damnit, i was going to join the ranks of the post office! people talked around me, young and old. these people didn't look like postal workers, did they? some wore ties, some wore shorts and t shirts. i had tried for something casual, but professional, slacks and a button down collar with more pencils sticking out of my shirt pocket that i had poked myself with a few times already. and then to top off my armament, a pencil sharpener. no way was i unprepared.
we were handed books and answer sheets and given strict warnings about cheating. if anytone were to be caught they would be expelled immediately. no ifs, ands or buts. this was serious stuff. i covered my answer sheet jealously. the young kid next to me didn't look like the cheating sort... or did he? he may have sensed that a superior test taker was sitting next to him about to fulfill his god given right to be in the ranks of the postal service. but he wasn't going to be able to take advantage of that fact.
after the warnings and instructions that took me right back to grade school, fill in the circles completely and fully, do not x in an answer, make sure that your answers correspond to the answer key, we were allowed to start, section by section and were timed. it began with address checking, two addresses were given and you were to determine if they were alike or varied in any way. as i've said, you start doing this in your head for awhile and it becomes automatic. i finished feeling good about this. i was a born address checker. then through three more sections in the test getting progressively harder, but i was still confident when i finished.
at the end of the exam, the post office gives an informal survey of personality questions for you to answer. rate in 5 steps where you can be pigeonholed. you have no room for an in between answer, but instead are told to answer it as quickly as possible without thinking it over too much. i've heard that the army has these personality questions too to weed out the undesirable psychopaths and the unstable. so too, with the post office. they were testing me, but so be it. i was up to it and when i left, i left the room with a smile on my face, ready to meet with my fate as a letter carrier.
weeks went by and i got anxious, irritable, itchy and i still hadn't heard from my future employer. then, one day a long slim letter came. nothing too fancy, just black and white with the eagle stamped on the front. at last! i opened it, not able to put it off any longer. "this is a record of your participation in the following exam." blah,blah, blah... and there it was in bold black writing. a 74.80. huh? not even five points above the minimum score needed to be added to the register. i was a little flustered, could it have been a mistake? there it was in black and white. the big scoring computer up in the sky may have decided to sit me back down for my hubris. my time was yet to come.