You might be familiar with Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story on ABC radio; it ran from 1976 to 2009. I remember him well, largely because of his unique delivery, filled with pauses and odd inflections. I only remember the particulars of one story however: it was about vandals who stole a stop sign and about the person (people?) killed when they drove through the intersection, not knowing they should have stopped. I'm not sure why I remember this episode, but I do.
I thought about vandals again today. Above is a picture of our mailbox. I installed it last year after vandals stole our previous mailbox. Not “knocked down” or “broke” but actually “stole.” It was simply there one day, gone the next.
Installing a mailbox is not the simplest thing in the world. I had to go to Home Depot, buy the box, buy a post on which to mount it and a spike to drive into the ground with a holder for the post. When I got everything home I couldn't find our sledgehammer so I went out again to buy one. Total expenditure: just a bit shy of $150.
With the very clever post holder spike (see it here) the actual installation was pretty simple, though swinging a sledgehammer is not something I do a lot, so I felt the pain next day.
I was pissed off about the whole adventure but got over it pretty quickly and haven't thought about it since.
Until Friday, when I came home from work and what should be lying on the ground opposite our house but our old mailbox (see picture). WTF? Did a good Samaritan find and return it? Did a parent order a recalcitrant child to bring it back? Or is it more sinister, perhaps a sicko sending some sort of message – “remember me? I'm still here.”
I'll likely never know, but this little drama ranks near the top of my weird-things-that-have-happened-to-me list. Paul Harvey might have titled this episode the Case of the Vandal with a Guilty Conscience.
No comments:
Post a Comment