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[Subtitled: Somewhat Organized Thoughts Upon The Occasion of A Hopefully Random Act of Very Minor Violence]
Our mailbox is a rectangular, black metal one that sits on top of a white wooden post by the street. It was tomato-ed. This is a first for us.
In the past our mailbox has been: smashed with a baseball bat; peanutbutter-ed; egged; toilet paper-ed; and robbed. [One summer I decided to put a small bracket on the back of the white post and hang a basket of geraniums from it. Very pretty… for the few days that it was there before someone stole it.] But we’ve never had a tomato thrown at it.
The attack of this not-so-rotten tomato occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. while I drove Z-D to work. Our mailbox, which is large, shiny and very noticeable when pulling out of our driveway, was just fine when we left home. But when I got back home, the door to it was hanging open and there was a small dent in the side of it. This I saw from the driveway as I pulled in.
It wasn’t until I walked down our driveway to see up-close what had happened that I realized that we had been tomato-ed with a large, firm, red tomato that left its seedy drool all over one side of our mailbox– and its gushy guts in the grass around the bottom of the wooden post.
As I didn’t grow up in suburbia I can only guess at the motivations for tomato-ing someone’s mailbox. Questions plague me.
- Which came first: the tomato or the mailbox?
- Was this planned? And if so, where did the perp get his or her tomato? Stolen from someone’s garden? Purloined from Mom’s frig? Purchased at Kroger?
- Is it possible that our mailbox wasn’t the intended target?
Considering there are high school kids in the two house across the street from us & in one house next door to us, I have to wonder if this is a case of mistaken tomato-ing.
Answers to these questions elude me, leaving me to suspect that the real reason our mailbox was tomato-ed has nothing to do with logic. I imagine, that like many things in life, the real reason that our mailbox was tomato-ed is that it was in the right place at the wrong time.
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 
Strange things about mailboxes! It seems they’ve always been a target of all kinds of happenings. When we first moved here, ours was totally run over twice. Since then, after buying a new one, we found 2 very large rocks which we placed on either side of the pole. Now if someone tries to run over the box again, I’m afraid their car will sustain some substantial damage. I’ve never heard of a mailbox being tomato-ed.
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Beth, you’re right about them being targets. Like your idea with the rocks. Won’t slow down someone intent on tomato-ing a mailbox, but solves your prob.
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I bet its shiny surface attracted some teenage attention. 🙂
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Margaret, I’m sure that to a certain age of teenager our mailbox looks like it has a big ‘ole sign on it that says: “hit me!”
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May be time to do the smaller mailbox centered inside a larger mailbox with cement poured into the space between them- instant indestructible mailbox.
(I think I saw this on an episode of CSI which ended in a death so I would ignore this suggestion if I was you.)
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la p, what an innovative idea. With my luck the weight of the two mailboxes + concrete would be so much that it’d break the wooden post on which the mailbox sits. And then I’d have a whole new prob to fix!
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wow. people totally hate your mailbox!
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tobe, they do hate our mailbox. I don’t take it personally. Kids wait for the school bus out in front of our house under the street light. I think that they see our mailbox every day and it becomes associated with school. So when irritated with school, what better way to get back at it than to abuse our mailbox? 😉
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