Only Kids Who Waited by the Mailbox Understand This Feeling

You ordered it weeks ago, forgot all about it, and then one day it just showed up.

You'd send off the little form from the back of a cereal box, drop it in the mail, and then begin the longest wait of your young life.

Weeks passed. You forgot it even existed. Then one ordinary afternoon, a package with your name on it appeared, and pure electricity shot through your entire body.

It didn't matter that the prize was usually a cheap plastic nothing. It was addressed to you, and being an eight-year-old with real mail felt like being famous.

That slow burn of anticipation is nearly extinct now. Everything arrives next day, tracked to the minute. We traded the wait away, and something small got lost with it.