Joanne Sherman’s column: Hissers, dingers and bongers

Have you seen the handwritten sign at the Center post office? 

“Please ring bell,” the sign says, with a squiggly arrow pointing down to the hand-drawn facsimile of a domed bell, directly above the domed bell.

Apparently, we the people aren’t ringing the bell when we’re supposed to. And when I say “we the people,” I am referring to moi and maybe a few others, because as it turns out, I’m not the only person who doesn’t like that bell.

My friend, Ceil (not her real name, wink wink) for instance. A few weeks ago Ceil and I stood side-by-side in front of that sign and talked about how neither of us was going to touch the bell. We agreed that even before COVID when no one realized how disgustingly germy everything is, we didn’t like to put a finger on that bell. 

I’m so adamant, I got into a fight over it once. I stood by the bell and two of us quietly hissed at each other about who should hit the dinger. We didn’t want to raise a ruckus. We’re too polite for that. So instead, we hissed. 

“You go first. Ring the bell!”

“That’s O.K. you can go.”

“No, you’re older, you don’t have as much time left.”

Who knows how long we would have stood there hissing at each other — like timid drivers at a four-way stop sign — if the postmaster — ummm…let’s call her Mary — hadn’t been alerted by all the hisses.

“You should have rung the bell!” she admonished.

Yeah. No. Not gonna happen. We postal patrons go to great lengths to avoid the bell. We cough or clear our throats vigorously. I’ve seen people purposely drop their keys two and three times to make noise and of course, there are those who employ the old chestnut, “Yoo hoo!” All so we don’t have to ding. 

Ceil and I have a mutual friend who is still traumatized over an unfortunate post office incident a few years ago. Our friend is not a dinger. 

“I’d rather die than ding,” she sniffs, when she can bring herself to talk about it. She dabs at her eyes with a crumpled tissue she carries so that when someone asks her to repeat her post office story, she doesn’t have to wipe her nose on her sleeve.

She was standing second in line with a woman in front, a man behind. After a few minutes, when no employee came to the counter, the man directly behind her lunged toward the window and brought his palm down hard on the metal dome.

“He didn’t just ding,” she says. “Dinging would have been bad enough. He bonged! Repeatedly slamming his palm down, four, five, six, times.” 

Then he went back to the end of the line. Horrified, the first person in line bolted, leaving our dear friend front and center when not one, but several employees, including Mary, appeared. It was amazing that police from across the street didn’t show up, too!

“I didn’t do that,” our dear friend stammered, “It wasn’t… I would never…”

The clerk held up his hand to stop her and said, quite nicely for someone who had been so harshly summoned, “That’s what the bell is there for.”

The poor woman’s voice still trembles when she relates the story, which happens often, because don’t we all love a good post office story?

She took to her bed for three days, convinced she’d be forever branded a multiple bonger. Which is what happened.

I should confess here that I have dinged. But only under duress. And I have a special technique. I give the dinger part of the bell the lightest feather of a tap and in that same split-second, cover the whole thing with both hands, trapping the worst part of the ding inside the dome.

Sometimes I have to repeat that action eight or 10 times before anyone in the back hears the muted dings.

It turns out that most women are reluctant dingers, whereas the majority of gentlemen ding with enthusiasm. Gusto, even. 

Only last week I watched a man walk past the line, right up to the counter and ring the bell, even though the clerk was standing right there. Then the man left without saying a word or conducting a single postal transaction.

It’s my hunch he was having one of those, “I ding, therefore I am,” moments.

Someone suggested that a perfect solution for us non-dingers would be to have a Whoopee cushion on the counter. That way, instead of dinging, one can produce the sound of someone passing gas. 

Speaking for myself, and probably Ceil too, I think we’d rather ding.

As of Saturday, the “Please ring the bell” sign was still posted, but if it ever goes missing, it wasn’t me. (wink wink.)