CHRISTMAS AND JACK

  Christmas season reminds me of the old man Jack I used to work together.

  When I was with a Customs Broker firm in Baltimore years ago, Jack was working with me at
the same department sitting right next to me. At that time he was already eighty some years old.
He was a happy funny old man joking around all day long making everybody bursts into laughter.
As far as the job is concerned he claimed he is doing it so perfectly and so very thoroughly all the
time that nobody can find any mistake from any of his work. He said he even double checks the
photo copy of the documents against the original paper. We used to tell him he does not need to
do that because it is all the same but he didn't mind.

He used to save all the Christmas cards he receives until next year, white-out the names and all
those hand-scribbled blissful messages and reuse with his own name. It was fun to try to figure
out who's name was there originally.

Several years after I resigned from the firm, I heard Jack passed away. God rest him peacefully.

This year, I decided to follow his practice and save all the Christmas cards and white-out and
reuse next year. But not many are coming in. Most of them are coming in through email. Those
I can reuse by forwarding without efforts to white-out.

If you are mailing out conventional paper card to me and you have not done it yet, please do
me a favor, don't write anything on the card. Just send a fresh one. It will save my work and
time. But make sure to write your name on the envelope so I don't send the same card back to
you next year.

Or, would you remember what card you sent me this year?

From Young Moon Kim