Mailbox Baseball

It would appear we were the victims of a rousing game of Mailbox Baseball last night. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is a “sport” typically practiced by suburban and rural teenage boys and involves driving by unsuspecting mailboxes during the night and then smashing them with a bat or other such instrument from the passenger side of the vehicle. It is done for fun.

At some point during the night, Ben awoke to a low rumbling noise and then a profound thump and crash that shook the house. I will note that almost anything shakes our house as it is propped on a 260 year old foundation that needs more love than it has received in the last century or so. This event also verifies that I am a very deep sleeper.

A trip out to the driveway this morning led to the discovery of a crushed mailbox about 10 feet away from its former perch – a retired telephone pole stump. And a call to the police station to report property damage let us know we weren’t the only victim in the neighborhood.

Several hours later we are the proud owners of a new (and cheap) mailbox. It is green. I also have a collection of diabolical plans should this happen again in the next few days or weeks. I won’t get into detailed specifics, but they all involve water balloons, moderate quantities of dye, and levers. While I flirted with the idea of nesting mailboxes with a layer of cement in between layers, it seems like too much work. As did the trebuchet.

I also learned that smashing a mailbox is a federal crime.