I’ve probably never mentioned this before, but I live in a small town.

It’s not even really a town, more like a hamlet.

Not even really a hamlet, more like a dozen families squished into a 3 mile radius of each other. Yeah. More like that.

I have to say that I love my small town’s charm.

It’s the  ‘my mail man calls me by name every time he drops off my mail’ kind of small.

“Good morning, Heather.”

“Frank,” I respond sleepily with a nod.

It’s the, ‘my grocer knows my grocery list better than I do and has no problem informing me if I am forgetting something’ kind of small.

It’s the kind of small that if at a little league game I were to rip a hole in the seat of my pants everyone in town would immediately know about it. Not because of the gossip chain, but because they were all there to bear witness, comment on it, photo it and post it on Facebook later that night.

People do not JUST know everyone else’s business here; they’re involved in it.

Well apparently my small town has decided to kick the privacy invasion up a notch.

How you ask? They’ve been stealing my mail.

No. I’m not kidding.

Last week Monday I went to my mail box (which by the way, I don’t have a post office box, it’s perma-stuck to the front of my house) and it was empty. I thought it was odd, but closed the door and asked Brian if he had grabbed it first.

“Nope, maybe they’re late today?”

But they weren’t late.

My mail didn’t come on Monday.

Nor did it come on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or Friday.

An entire week of nothing. No sign of a card, bill, or 50% off coupon to have my lady bits waxed. Just nothing.

I was beginning to feel a little bad for my mailbox, sitting all day every day open and wanting; wishing for a bill or two to find a home within it and imbue it with purpose once again.

With no sign of our mail returning Brian and I began to postulate on its mysterious disappearance.

1.) Canada Post was, once again, on strike but we hadn’t heard about it on the news because ours was the only house they were boycotting and the media thought we’d figure it out.

2.) Frank (our mail man) was sick and tired of ducking under the bush growing on our main walkway and until we cut it down he was refusing to deliver our mail citing it as a hazardous condition (akin to a roaming Rottweiler trained to take out intruders).

3.) Some crazed rich philanthropist was stealing all our mail so that he could “Pay it forward” by paying all of our bills for us from now until the end of time.

4.) Canada Post had a mix up in office. One of our neighbours was on vacation and had requested a mail hold for the week and instead of writing down their address they recorded ours.

Personally, I like the rich philanthropist guess..

Monday came and went and still my mailbox was void of the shiny little manila envelopes it so craved.

I was beginning to get a little paranoid. Perhaps our mystery philanthropist did not have our best intentions in mind. Perhaps it was something more sinister at work here. I was even beginning to miss my bills. (Because as I learned the last time I moved, just because you did not GET your bill does not excuse you from PAYING your bill.)

Then yesterday morning I went, once again, to check my mail and it was all back: the entire weeks worth spilling out of my mailbox and onto the ground. Every letter suddenly and inexplicably back.

I gathered it up, never before so excited to see my bills, and brought it inside.

My bills! My beautiful bills! They’re back!!!

I had to remind myself I didn’t enjoy paying those. Oh yeah. Crud.

Couldn’t the perp bring back everything BUT the bills?

I went to open my first letter when my hand froze. Something was wrong. Something was extremely wrong. I began to examine every letter. Wtf?

I called Brian over. Did he see it too?

Yup. Ladies and Gentleman every single piece of mail had been steamed open. Every. Single. One.

My mailbox and I felt violated. Who did this conniving, dimwitted perp think he was invading our privacy like this?

The best part? When he (or she… sorry I’m such a stereotyper!) steamed open our mail and couldn’t figure out how to get it closed again… s/he used purple glue stick to glue some of them back together!

PURPLE GLUE STICK.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why someone would want to go through MY mail. Maybe they thought that they could find credit card or bank account numbers and fraud us. Maybe they were stealing our mail as a form of casing our house to see if we had anything valuable to steal, but once they opened our account statements and saw how much debt we were in decided we clearly had nothing of value to steal and so gave it back.

And then it hit me. The purple glue stick was the clue.

I remembered that five year old girl scout coming and knocking on my door offering me tempting, sugar-coma-inducing deliciousness. In a rare moment of willpower I had politely turned her down.

THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE GIRL SCOUT REVENGE.

Step one. Steal your mail.

Step two…. bring your household to its knees by bombarding you with the stale girl scout cookies you refused to buy.

They were declaring war: the purple glue stick, their calling card.

I just have one thing to say: Bring it on, Girl Scouts. Bring it on.