To Post, or Not to Post

That is the question. I find it hard, lately, to try and organize my thoughts in any type of literary fashion. Since I am not a big fan of people who use blogs as nothing more than a day's itinerary, that leaves me at a big of a loss as to what to write here.

I guess Icould easily just recount what I ate for breakfast, and what magazine I read today, but even I am not interested in that. I try to make this place an ethereal sandbox where I struggle with insights or make progress towards some goal. It takes some emotional energy to identify and communciate those struggles on a semi-weekly basis and, right now, I'm just fresh out of emotional energy.

So, let me be boring and just recount something that happened today:

I was in my garage building a workshop table for my new garage workshop when I heard an unpleasant crunch sound coming from the street. Some teenage kid had, inadvertently, backed up into my mailbox. Damage to the mailbox was light, damage to the kid's car (more likely his parents' car) was much heavier: a busted taillight and some denting.

Walking down to the street, I couldn't help but remember when I had done the same thing learning to drive....

...Cue wavy lines signalling a flashback...

I was about 15 years old and wanted to take a drive around my neighborhood to "practice" my driving skills. My immediate family tired of this pretty quickly, but my Uncle Billy agreed one day to let me "take him for a spin". I backed out of the driveway, went around the block, and then pulled back into the driveway.

Upon pulling back into the driveway, I noticed that someone had knocked down the mailbox. Questioning my neighbor who was riding his lawnmower at the time I discovered that the vandal in question was... myself. In my zeal to drive around the nieghboerhood I had backed up over my mailbox. In his zeal to block out the outside world while I was driving, my uncle hadn't noticed.

This realization preceeded (by about 5 minutes) a very awkward talk with my dad.

Me: Hey dad. Do you know how much of a pain it is to have to walk up the driveway and get the mail?
Dad: Not really.
Me: Well, I've got good news for you!
Dad: What's that, son?
Me: You don't have to go to the mailbox anymore to pick up your mail!
Dad: Why is that?
Me: You don't have a mailbox anymore. I ran it over.

The whole mailbox incident taught me two very important life lessons:

1. Always look behind you when backing up in a car.
2. Never introduce tragedy with humor.

These thoughts,then, passing through my mind, I reach the mailbox. I reach the teenageboy and teeneage girl that were in the car. She is inspecting the damage to the backend of the car. He is looking at the mailboxes.

As I said before, the damage to the mailbox is minor. It's a cheap, plastic thing on a pressure-treated 4x4. It probably welcomed the car as ender to its misery. I assured the kid that everything was fine and he was not in trouble (from me... the car's owners might think differently). Apologizing, he got back in the car and left.

A hammer, some nails, and 4 decking screws later andthemailbox was as good as new, which is to say it is still an ugly plastic thing on a pressure-treated 4x4. But it will hold mail without complaint, and its plastic face has a few new battlescars.

I'm going to think twice before parking my car on the street...