During mail call one evening at Marine Corps boot camp, I received several letters from home. The drill instructor was getting irritated at having to keep calling my name. "You must have a lot of people at home who like you, huh?" he barked.
"Sir, no, sir!" I shouted.
"Oh, so you're calling me a liar?" goaded the DI.
Trained as a Marine to think quickly on my feet, I yelled out, "Sir, creditors, sir!"
The DI had to leave the room so we wouldn't see him laughing.
When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
~Adlai Stevenson
In 1996, people in the United States sent and received 182,660,700,000 pieces of mail domestically. By way of comparison, Japan ranked second on this list with just 24,971,279,000.
