Mailboxes and Idiots
A really quick and crappy bird's eye view rendition of my current house on Window's Paint program:
So, the green is obviously grass, the ambiguous form in pale barf green is the house, the big gray area to the right is the driveway, and the black is the street. The large red thing is the excessively wide and short (about two feet wide, two feet long, and three feet tall) column of concrete in which the previous owners had thought to set the mailbox inside of. It was solid concrete covered in some white ugly plaster and paint coat, and it sat right on the edge of the driveway. It was short enough so that you could not see it at all from any seat within my mom's car.
Having to deal with remembering not to cut the corner when turning right so as not to hit the huge concrete lump had been a relatively new concept for my mother, and proved to be quite the problem when, one night, she forgot. Now, my mother is a very small woman, and her car is probably the biggest vehicle she could drive without getting a commercial vehicle license, so it's hard to really blame her... For crashing the side of the car into the post. It's pretty easy to blame her for getting a car that, when she sits in the driver's seat, it's hard to tell if there's really anyone in there at all.
Anyway, point is, _I_ even hate this mailbox post and can't fathom anyone actually thinking it a good idea. So yesterday my brother and mom tore it down. They replaced it with a small and hopefully classy wall hanging style of mailbox located next to the garage door, set back just 15 feet from where the ugly concrete slab used to be. It's marked in blue in the picture up there.
According to our postman, this was unacceptable. How dare we decide where to receive our unwanted junk mail and bothersome bills. Who do we think we are to choose to rid our driveway and yard of a nuisance piece of crap and replace it with something sensible and less problematic. He decided to walk up to the door and take this issue up with my mom and brother, telling them in a huff that he would have to speak to his supervisor about this. Apparently it is a question of legality. Seriously? Is it just him or do we really live in '1984'???
And is it just me, or do the majority of post people [hate me and therefore] decide to exercise their idiot bone a little too much?
So, the green is obviously grass, the ambiguous form in pale barf green is the house, the big gray area to the right is the driveway, and the black is the street. The large red thing is the excessively wide and short (about two feet wide, two feet long, and three feet tall) column of concrete in which the previous owners had thought to set the mailbox inside of. It was solid concrete covered in some white ugly plaster and paint coat, and it sat right on the edge of the driveway. It was short enough so that you could not see it at all from any seat within my mom's car.
Having to deal with remembering not to cut the corner when turning right so as not to hit the huge concrete lump had been a relatively new concept for my mother, and proved to be quite the problem when, one night, she forgot. Now, my mother is a very small woman, and her car is probably the biggest vehicle she could drive without getting a commercial vehicle license, so it's hard to really blame her... For crashing the side of the car into the post. It's pretty easy to blame her for getting a car that, when she sits in the driver's seat, it's hard to tell if there's really anyone in there at all.
Anyway, point is, _I_ even hate this mailbox post and can't fathom anyone actually thinking it a good idea. So yesterday my brother and mom tore it down. They replaced it with a small and hopefully classy wall hanging style of mailbox located next to the garage door, set back just 15 feet from where the ugly concrete slab used to be. It's marked in blue in the picture up there.
According to our postman, this was unacceptable. How dare we decide where to receive our unwanted junk mail and bothersome bills. Who do we think we are to choose to rid our driveway and yard of a nuisance piece of crap and replace it with something sensible and less problematic. He decided to walk up to the door and take this issue up with my mom and brother, telling them in a huff that he would have to speak to his supervisor about this. Apparently it is a question of legality. Seriously? Is it just him or do we really live in '1984'???
And is it just me, or do the majority of post people [hate me and therefore] decide to exercise their idiot bone a little too much?