Envelopes

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon opening envelopes as part of the Great Graduate School Applications Project.

Each packet had to be opened, its inner manilla envelope removed and opened if necessary and all 500 of its enclosed recommendations and transcripts, each in its own separate envelope, had to be opened as well.

As I opened these envelopes, I worked on perfecting my letter-opener technique. The trick is to get the blade through half of the top in one sweep, then drag it over and up to tear open the rest of the top and about an inch of the side.

Also as I opened these envelopes, I developed a hatred of those who paper-clipped duplicate envelopes together and those who sealed their envelopes so securely that there was no opening to slip the letter-opener through.

Subconsciously, I took revenge upon the faceless masses by slipping my opener into one envelope, pulling extra hard to overcome the unusually strong paper resistance, and massacring some poor fool's official transcript.