The Mailbox Brigade

I haven't been writing anything lately.

Of course, I would like to create something beautiful and everlasting. But, that's not going to happen.

I would like to embellish a long ago experience to the point that it is worth remembering or at least worthy of rumination for a moment or two.

But, I will still write something, even if the darkness that is painted is the color of dusk, rather than of the midnight moon.

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I woke up this morning to find my parents gone. I looked all over the house before I shook out the cobwebs of sleep and remembered that they had told me that they were going to visit some relatives this fine Saturday. Alright!!! I had the house to myself. But, what to do..., what to do...

I glanced out the picture window and saw Dad's old truck. Man, how I would love to take that thing for a little ride. There were only a few complications. For one, I didn't have a driver's license even though I was seventeen. For some reason, my parents thought that I was too immature to be given the opportunity to acquire the most wanted possession of any teenager of that long ago era.

And, another problem presented itself at the end of our driveway. My grandmother lived in a little cottage at the end of the road and would surely see me driving the truck and would surely rat me out. She was a good grandmother. She loved her momma and Elvis too. But, she didn't take kindly to snot nosed kids stealing their daddy's truck.

But, in a flash of inspiration, or rebellion, maybe, I quickly found the truck keys and bounded out of the house to begin my Saturday morning adventure. I took careful note of how the truck was parked. It was a little caddie cornered, so I knew where to return it and allay any suspicions by my parents. Of course, they probably wouldn't notice any deviation in parking location, but I wanted to eliminate that variable. When you are committing such a heinous crime, you need to cover your tracks as best as you can, given the cognitive skill set which had been genetically endowed to me or by me, given the biological entities evolving at that time.

I even thought about the extra mileage I would put on the truck. My buddies and I had discussed the notion that the odometer can be reversed by driving the vehicle backwards. I didn't know if that was true or not, but, what the hey, I would try out that hypothesis at some point during the morning regress.

Well, I finally decided that the planning stage of my adventure had ended and now it was time for action. I jumped into the driver's seat and felt the steering wheel. I could feel the potential power in the vehicle. Since I had never driven before, it was an exhilarating feeling to know that I would be controlling this powerful beast of a truck.

I tentatively inserted the key and cranked the engine. It started immediately and I was astounded by the noise of the engine and the adrenalin rush that I was feeling. Rather than attempting to turn the vehicle around, I decided to back out of the driveway, which was at least two hundred yards long. Being unfamiliar with this particular driving skill, I ran off the road a few times and clipped a few of the yard bushes, but not enough to inflict any damage that I couldn't fix that afternoon.

After backing out onto the secondary road which adjoined our property, I took off like a bat out of...well, actually, I couldn't get the accelerator to work as I perceived it should, so I crept along at twenty five miles an hour for a few blocks.

Then, I decided that I needed to find a buddy to share my experience. I immediately thought of Rudy Baker. He was a couple years younger than me, but he was an adventuresome sort who would be up for a little debauchery this morning, I was sure.

I was driving up his street when I spotted him going in the other direction on his motor bike. I waved him down and asked him if he wanted to join me in some fun. He looked at me and the truck with some trepidation and then replied, "You don't have a driver's license, do you?" I said that I didn't, but that it wouldn't be an adventure if I had a license. Without the license, we were being rebellious. With a license, we would only be driving around aimlessly for no reason.

Rudy sat there on his moped for a few minutes and then casually said, "Ah, what the hell, let's see how you can drive this thing."

I followed Rudy back to his house so that he could park his bike. He then jumped into the truck and we started our adventure. Everything was going fine at first. Rudy seemed calm and I thought that I was handling the truck with efficacy. However, as I gained confidence in my abilities, I became more and more reckless. Instead of driving at the speed limit, I started pushing five, ten, fifteen miles over.

I glanced over at Rudy and perceived some consternation written across his visage. I asked him if he was okay and he responded with a chuckle and a "no problem" body language presentation.

There was only one problem that I saw. I was having trouble missing the mailboxes which were placed barely off the road in the rural area in which I was driving. And, I perceived that Rudy was starting to feel some unease. I picked up on that when he yelled, "Holy shit, you only missed that one by a half an inch."

I should have responded by slowing down, but his obvious terror emboldened me to become even more reckless and more likely to hit one of those symbolic bastions of governmental ineptitude.

But, after a quarter of an hour or so, I lost my enthusiasm for scaring the crap out of Rudy and decided to head home. I dropped Rudy off at his house, with his parting shot of "Don't involve me with any more of your adventures, okay?" ringing in my ear.

I meticulously re-parked the truck in the exact location in which it reposed before my adventure. I did try that backing up routine, but realized that I couldn't back up that far. So, I left the mileage as it was. I had stopped at a gas station and put a few gallons of gas in the tank in order to attempt to allay any suspicion with regard to that investigative variable. And, I also remembered that Grandma Perry had gone with my parents to visit relatives.

So, I perceived that I had covered all of the bases. All in all, it was a good day. I had a little adventure. I scared Rudy enough to make him admire my zest for adventure. And, I created a lifelong memory of just barely missing all of those mailboxes flying by the right rearview mirror at supersonic speed.

I wish that there was more to the story. But, alas, this is only a Seinfeldian moment replayed in my head and partially documented on these pages for no apparent reason.