My Ultimate: How to Screw With Someone's Day

("My Ultimate" will run most Tuesdays and will feature any topic that hops into my head.  The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the other New England Mamas. . . although they should).

A few years ago, in the middle of the night, the back window of our SUV was smashed by a flying mailbox.  The mailbox was stolen from a different part of town before it was thrown from a speeding car into our back seat. 

Glass was everywhere, and I mean everywhere.  All over my daughter's car seat, on my front dashboard, in the cup holders.  It was a royal pain in the ass and a bit of a surprise.  Because, while mailbox bashing had long been a tradition in our town among the bored and reckless, using a mailbox as an object of destruction was new.  Even the police officer seemed surprised:  "Wow", he said as he picked up the dented mailbox and removed a piece of mail still inside, "I haven't seen this done before".

For a while, it seemed that it was open season on the humble mailbox.  Our friends had the most battered, beaten mailbox that just sat on the ground next to what used to be its post.  We knew people who were buying stainless steel mailboxes and mounting them on concrete posts to make them less attractive to the baseball bat.  We were pretty happy that we had a large prickly bush surrounding ours.

Yesterday, I heard that the vandals had upped the antee.  Sunday night, between 15 and 20 cars in our town had their car windows shot out.  All those people had to deal with glass everywhere.

Lovely.  Whatever happened to throwing some eggs at a front door and running like the speed of light down the street?  Or, even better, throwing a few rolls of toilet paper in the trees of a neighbor?  Rubbing soap on windows? 

Ahhhh. . . the good ol' days of vandalism, when a good rain could wash it all away.

Comments

[Robin]

Oh wow, that really bites.

[AlphaDogMa]

Mailboxes are their chosen victims today. Tomorrow? Marginalized members of society. Scary.