Mailbox

August 14th, 2023

We were eating dinner when a black SUV pulled into our driveway. We seldom get visitors, so I got up from the table to investigate. I reached the front door just as a middle-aged woman and a tall, gawky teenager stood on our porch. The woman looked flummoxed, and the young man no expression on his face at all.

The woman, who I expect was the mother of the teenager, immediately started her monologue. She spoke rapidly:

“We were driving along, and we hit your mailbox. There were kids in the street, and we tried to avoid them, and…”

I thought to myself, “Fuck, not again.”

We live along a tight curve in the road. Our neighbor shares this section of the street with us. Drivers, even people who live nearby, often take the turn too quickly, and my neighbor and I often fix or replace our mailboxes. About six months ago, in the dead of winter, a man from down the street made a power slide through the snow and slush, and then slammed into the mailbox from the guy next door. He hit it hard, breaking the wooden post off at ground level and ending up in the ditch in front of my house. The mailbox was a dead loss and the front of the car had more than cosmetic damage. I am still picking up shards of broken plastic from my lawn.

Our family had already experienced an extremely stressful week when this lady and her adolescent son showed up at our door. We were dealing with a major health issue, and it was difficult for me to appreciate the woman’s emotional turmoil. I felt exhausted, and I honestly didn’t care about this mishap. I just stood in front of her and listened as she went on and on.

“As I said, we were trying to avoid the children in the street, and we pulled too far to the right…”

Who is this “we” she was speaking of? Were they both driving the car? I noticed she had a pink cast on her left arm. The kid was probably the driver. The young man was stood silently next to his upset mother. She had probably said words to the effect,

“Just shut up and let me handle this.”

I sighed.

“Okay, let’s look at it.”

She kept talking as we walked over to injured mailbox. I stared at it without speaking. It was scratched and bent. The thing was just a shell of thin sheet metal, so it wasn’t designed for collisions. It was hanging loose from the post. I shrugged.

My lack of emotion apparently made the woman more nervous. She expected some kind of reaction from me, and I was too tired to give her that satisfaction. She spoke more quickly, and I listened less.

She stammered, “Of course, we’ll pay to replace the mailbox, with something comparable. Or we could replace it ourselves if you like. How does this mount on there anyway?”

I didn’t look at her. I just said, “Go ahead and fix it. I was going to need a new one anyway.”

She replied, “Good.” She had her son hand me a scrap of paper with their contact information on it. He just looked at me blanky. He had the beginnings of a moustache on his upper lip.

I asked her, “So, did your car get damaged?”

She glanced at the right side of her car with a pained expression. Most of the car had a deep horizontal scrape along the side. It wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely noticeable. I wondered if she was going to call her insurance. How do you explain that a mailbox suddenly jumped out in front of you?

Mother and son went home. I went into the garage and grabbed a hammer, nails, and pliers. After about half an hour, I had the mailbox secured to the post, and more or less upright. I could open and close it with a bit of effort. Good enough.

I haven’t heard anything from the mailbox manglers. Maybe they will come and replace it. Maybe not. It’s only a mailbox.