Collectors' Item

Words: 564

Each album held 10 items.

She had two albums, all full. There was one item left over.

"Twenty-one items," she announced, triumphantly, straightening up.

"Finally," Akhilesh replied, laughing. "You've been bent over that collection for hours. I thought your back would stick permanently in that position if you didn't straighten up soon."

"I didn't realize how complicated it had gotten," she confessed. "I thought I was being pretty organized to start with."

Akhilesh strolled across the room. The albums were plain black with a round Writing Dot Com 'Follow Your Dreams' sticker in the bottom right corner of each. "May I?" he asked.

"Go ahead, teacher!"

"I don't like the title of teacher. I'm your brother. I just got you in to collecting postal items, that's all."

Carefully, he opened the first album and leafed his way through it. Then the second one, and finally, the single item left over.

"Great, you've got them arranged geographically, with an explanatory note on each. Well done. I like the way you've mounted the odd one on card, too. Looks good."

"You want to hear my presentation? I get to make a three minute presentation."

"Sure."

Shyamala cleared her throat and began. "Welcome to my presentation on post-marks. In the olden days ..."

"Olden days?" Akhilesh chuckled. "In your brother's time, you mean ..."

"Well, you're older ... Anyway ... in earlier times, people wrote letters and mailed them in envelopes, with stamps on. These stamps were then canceled at the post office, so that they could not be re-used. The cancelation also showed the date and place of the post office or origin."

"The post office of origin?" her brother interrupted. He knew what she was talking about but he wanted her to get used to an audience asking her questions, as would happen at the public-speaking competition.

"The post office where you posted the letter," Shyamala continued, not missing a beat. She was gaining confidence, that was certain.

"Now, there are 150,000 post offices in India. Of these, two hundred post offices have special pictorial cancelations. These cancelations show not only the date and place of origin, but have a picture of a landmark in the area as well."

"Only two hundred?"

"Yes. Only two hundred post offices have these marks, and you have to go personally to the post office to get the mark. So, these marks are rare. I present my collection of twenty-one of these marks."

She went on to display and mention each of the marks.

Here's an example:

The speech exceeded the time limit and her brother helped her edit it. When the time came, her parents and brother drove her to the competition.

She didn't win a prize, other teenagers made better presentations.

Her real victory came years later.

Five years later, to be precise.

The museum was collecting rare items to add to its existing displays.

She carried two albums and one odd item, still the way they had been when she was a teenager, to the curator's office.

"My goodness, some of these have since been withdrawn," he said, whistling through his teeth. "Nobody else has brought these to us. You'll get a display case with your name and photo on it."

She grinned. "And the name of my teacher," she requested.

The display case now contains 21 items, with the inscription 'Collection of rare Post Marks by Akhilesh and Shyamala."