Sealed with a kiss

Undergraduates who go to the Frist Campus Center or Dod Hall to pick up packages usually have to tell the mailroom workers their room numbers and then give their names. Brad Simmons '03 simply has to show up.

Because of the large number of packages that he receives each week from his mother, many of the mailroom employees know Simmons' name and face so well that when he walks up to the window, they immediately know who he is.

Simmons, who hails from San Jose, Calif., said his mother sends him about three or four packages each week — packages that contain everything from candy and other kinds of food to towels and deoderizer.

Simmons said his mother has even sent him a kit to clean the bathroom in his six-man suite in Butler College. "She came to visit and our bathroom was a pig sty," Simmons said. "So she sent us this kit to clean it up. There was even a plunger in here."

Simmons recalled one particular incident in the mailroom when he came to pick up a large number of packages.

"I came in to get my packages, and when [the mailroom employee] heard who I was, she scolded me, saying, 'Don't you know your momma loves you,' " Simmons said.

In a separate incident, after giving the employee his room number, another worker quickly got up, came to the window, gave Simmons an irritated look and said, "So it's you," then went to the back and continued to work.

But Simmons was quick to point out that the mailroom workers are always innocently teasing him whenever they make these comments.

And he added that he often doesn't even want much of what his mother sends him.

"I usually tell her not to send me anything, but she just sends a lot of candy most of the time. So my roommates usually just end up eating all of it," Simmons joked.

Simmons explained that some of the mailroom workers jokingly chastise him sometimes for not coming to pick up his packages immediately after he is notified that they have arrived.

"Through no fault of my own, the people in the mailroom think because I don't pick each package up on the very day it arrives, that I somehow am not grateful, but that is the opposite," said Simmons, who has received as many as seven packages in one week during the fall semester.

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And Simmons isn't the first student to be recognized by mailroom employees. Brad's brother Jim, who graduated from Princeton last year, also received several packages each week from their mother.

"They recognized [Jim] too," Simmons said. "He's working in New York now. He hasn't given my mother his address since he doesn't want her to send him anything."

Nevertheless, the younger Simmons said that he doesn't think he will ever resort to hiding from his mother. He added that he is grateful for his mother's love and "feels bad" about the burden on the mailroom staff.

But in the meantime, mother Simmons will continue to send him care packages whenever she thinks her son might need them. It will certainly be a long year for the mailroom staff.