Darn Kids

( This isn't my mailbox. I keep my grass neatly trimmed.)

For the fifth time in two months, I arrived home from work yesterday to find my mailbox laying on the ground. The odds of the wind uprooting the wooden stake and throwing the mailbox down this many times seem pretty low. I'm putting my money on the hooligans who wait in my yard each morning for the school bus and return there each day at 3:00.

I've seen them open and close my mailbox before, and it's only a matter of time before I catch the little boogers in the act of tearing down my mailbox. I just need to invest in a security camera system. Darn kids and their new fangled "Rock-N-Roll" music. Back in my day, not only did we walk eight miles to school barefoot in the snow, but as law-abiding citizens, we also showed appropriate respect for the United States mail. To wit,

Title 18, United States Code
Section 1705. Destruction of letter boxes or mail
Whoever willfully or maliciously injures, tears down or destroys any letter box or other receptacle intended or used for the receipt or delivery of mail on any mail route, or breaks open the same, or willfully or maliciously injures, defaces or destroys any mail deposited therein, shall be fined up to $250,000 under this title or imprisoned not more than three years.


Even though the U.S. Postal Inspectors are infamous for their "The Geneva Conventions Don't Apply to Us" attitude when it come to detaining their suspects, I some how doubt they'd fine a seventh grader $250,000 and I'm willing to bet he wouldn't even be arrested, let a lone spend three years in juvi (even though it IS a federal crime). His friends might stop tearing down my "letter box," but they probably would start throwing eggs at my house, which I'm pretty sure is not federal crime and would not cause Johnny Law to come a-runnin'. It probably wouldn't help to "obtain a self-adhesive Label 33 from the Postal Inspection Service which warns that willful damage to mail boxes and theft of mail is a crime."

For now, I guess this mail nerd will just keep on picking up my mailbox and digging new holes. Just don't let me see you jacking up my mailbox. Punk.

Fun Fact: "mailbox" is one word, while "letter box" is two. Learning is fun, 'cause knowledge is power!