Can You Mail It?

Double-Bagging It.

No good scientist tries an experiment just once and calls the results conclusive. And because we like to think of what we’re doing as important research, we didn’t want our one undelivered package to blemish our otherwise spotless record of sending weird shit through the mail.

Truth is, over the course of the last 13 weeks of this experiment, we’ve mostly been surprised at just how amazing our postal system really is.

In what other part of the world can you tape five stickers with the statue of liberty’s face on them onto a cheeseburger and fully expect it to survive a cross-country trip completely intact — and just as delicious as the day you sent it?

The fact that this can be done for under $3 is kind of mind-blowing when we really stop to contemplate it a bit.

But I digress: This week, we decided to reattempt our single failed mailing, the unwrapped condom in a plastic baggie. Only this time, we changed three small — but important — variables. For one, we decided to upgrade from our admittedly flimsy and hole-prone store brand sandwich baggies to the more expensive Ziploc brand freezer bags. Then we decided to double bag it (pun very much intended) by putting that freezer baggie into a second freezer baggie. Third, we changed where it was mailed to and mailed from.

In the original mailing, our condom was dropped in a blue box in Deep Ellum and was addressed to arrive in our then-Deep Ellum-based headquarters. This go-’round we dropped the new condom in a blue box in Lakewood, with a final destination in Casa Linda.

That last one just might be the most important change of the three. Since we’ve been mailing items to a Casa Linda address for this column, they’ve been arriving much more quickly, rarely taking more than two days.

And, to be sure, this time the condom came back — not only exciting us greatly, but making us wonder if there’s really anything that can’t be mailed. For the time being, at least, we couldn’t be more impressed with the USPS.

Item: One unwrapped, seemingly used, condom.
Estimated Value: Less than a dollar
Cost of Postage: $0.90.
Method: We put the condom into a clear Ziploc freezer baggie, then put that baggie into a second baggie. The address was written directly on the outer baggie in a Sharpie.
Days to Deliver: Two.
Condition Upon Arrival: So perfect we’re probably going to try and re-use the same baggie and stamps again next week.
Running “Can You Mail It?” Success Rate: 92.31 percent.