My package has experienced an exception. I thought maybe everyone should enjoy that sentence from my email rather than keeping it to myself.

My package, my sturdy cardboard box of tasteful gift items for upcoming holidays, has somehow achieved sentience. I hope that UPS is now handling it with exceptional care and offering it food and water at regular intervals to keep its experience positive. Now it might object to riding behind other packages in the truck, seeing nothing but other cardboard boxes and not a glimpse of floor or sky. It no longer rests secure in its being regardless of the circumstances—the bumps in the road are now jolts of outrageous fortune and, Hamlet like, my package must consider the purpose of its existence in this world of conveyors, hand trucks, loud music, and men and women in brown.

I suppose I should prepare to be particularly nurturing of my package when it arrives. After all, its exceptional experience—a late train—may have traumatized it. It may have felt abandoned, unloved, even panicked. What a responsibility I now have!