The Mailbox Story April 16, 2009

So I’m posting this story at the urging of Pi and Krythe. They seem to believe that you people out there in blog land would like to hear some of my old exploits. But before I really begin, I need to add a bit of a disclaimer:

This story is not true. Cannot be true, because some of the things are quite illegal. And being the law-abiding people that we are, we don’t ever do illegal things.Yup, just us law-abiding citizens here.

So it was just 2 am, and (As those of you who are HIMYM know) nothing good ever happens after 2 am. Me and Johan were sitting in his living room watching tv, bored out of out skulls and trying to figure out what we should do, if anything. Suddenly he decides that we should hop in his truck and go see what Blondie is up to, so that is exactly what we do. Turns out that Blondie is asleep, but it only takes us about 5 minutes of cajoling for us to convince him to come join us anyway.

Its a little fuzzy now, but I believe our plan at that time was to go about doing some simple and innocent mischief, kicking lightposts to turn them off and what-not. But as we picked Blondie up from his house, Johann points out his neighbors tree. Appearently they had tried this before, because Johan explains to me that the fuzz off this palmish looking tree is about the most flammable thing he’s ever seen. Now this sets my pyromanic mind a-workin’. Why just kick some stupid lightposts when we could just set some shit on fire? Johan readily agrees with me, so when Blondie finally comes downstairs we go about raiding his garage.

Turns out his garage is a pyro’s dream, we make off with:

• 1 gallon of gasoline
• 3 cans of flammable bug spray
• 1 can of lantern fuel
• 4 barbeque lighters
• 3 bics
• 6 or 7 handfuls of the palm fuzz
• 4 largish fronds from the tree.

So that was our inventory for our night of mischief. I set a few pieces of the fuzz on fire before we left, just to see of Johan was right. And he was, oh boy he was. Stuff caught quick and burned for awhile, my pyro brain was aflame with ideas. We all pile back into the truck and start cruising around, racking our brains for ideas on what to burn. Now I’m still not sure exactly who came up with it, but somebody mentions the idea of setting a mailbox on fire. We all immediately agree that this would be completely epic and set about finding us a mailbox.

We pretty quickly decide to head to the old, poor part of Pecan Grove where all the trailer homes are. We also pretty quickly decide that we really can’t light it up where it stands, since we really don’t want a load of birdshot in our asses (since everyone who lives up there has a shotgun, don’tcha know). So our grand scheme becomes to -steal- a mailbox and then light it on fire. After a few minutes of searching we find a likely looking candidate, a pair of mailboxes side-by-side on a mostly deserted road. We all hop out of the cab and start pushing and pulling on the mailbox, trying to loosen it up enough.

About 5 minutes pass and we still don’t have this bitch out of the ground, doesn’t even look like we’re weakening its hold on it. We pretty much decide to say fuck it and me and Blondie hop in the cab. Johan is having none of this, refusing to be beay by an inanimate object. He rears back his leg and sideways kicks the mailbox, which decides its had quite enough of that and finally falls the fuck over.

Me and Blondie pause and look at each other, then at Johan who is looking back at us rather quick. The moment is broken when Blondie finally yells “Well shit… lets grab it quick!” So me and him pile back out of the cab, all three of us grabbing the mailbox and tossing it back in the bed before piling back into the cab. Johan starts the car and goes to put it in drive, foot going for the pedal as Bondie yells out again.

“Wait! The mail!”

So we all rush back out of the cab, pulling the rather large wad of mail out of the box and shoving it in the one thats still standing. We quickly hop back into the cab and roar off, laughing like fools. I still don’t know why neither me nor Johan questioned his insistance why we had to save the mail when we had just stolen a mailbox, but we didn’t. So down we race towards the better part of the Grove, debating where we should light this bitch up. Suddenly me and Johan get the same idea at the same time, we should head to the abadoned field behind the elementry school.

We do a bit of off-roading and make it to this wooden bridge connecting the two fields, pulling through and turning around so that we can get some light from the highbeams. It didn’t occur to us until much later that perhaps setting a fire on a -wooden- bridge that we need to be able to cross to leave. Real smart planning. So anyway, we set up the mailbox on the bridge, loading the metal box itself with palm fuzz, a few fronds and the entire can of lantern fuel. Oh yeah, this is gonna be fun. We can’t decide who gets to light it up, so we settle on all of us. At once. With makeshift flamethrowers.

We each grab one of the bics and cans of bug spray, get ourselves set up around it and set it off. And oh children, it is -glorious-. The stuff goes up with a fwoosh, our grins lit up in the glow. We sit there and stare for a few moments, completely enthralled before we finally realize the issue with our current situation, being on a wooden bridge with a furiously flaming mailbox. Me and Johan each take a grip on the wooden post, and start an ‘On three’ count to toss it into the stream below.

Now…. he swears I did it on purpose, and I honestly don’t remember if I did or not, but I was slighty off on the count. So Johan, who was in front of my on the post, reaches the count of 2 as I reach 3 and shove forward. He still has a rather firm grip on the flaming mailbox, which is now on a rather fast trajectory for the stream below. He, unfortunately, has quick enough reactions to let go, but he’s still teetering on the edge, arms twirling. My hand is about 3 inches from his back, and my brain freezes, caught in a loop as it tries to decide to push or pull.

Johan decides it for me as he finally catches his balance and turns around to face my sheepish grin as I tuck my hand back behind my back with a shrug. We take one last look at the sinking mailbox before heading back to the truck and firing it up. Now, I know you’re all thinking this heres the end of our story, but I am sad to say that we were not done yet. No sir, not by a long shot.

So we spend another hour or so driving around Pecan Grove doing random acts of mischief, including but not limited to me and Johan spending a good 10 minutes trying to convince Blondie to take a dump on the hood of a white sports car. He had his pants at half-mast and was about ready to do it, but we couldn’t quite convince him to go for it, so we head to the gas station instead.

About this time is when we decide to use the rest of our flamable material to light a swing on fire. I had seen it done once before, and the pattern the heavy plastic makes as it melts is quite impressive. So we head over to New Territory park and decide to leave the truck in the lot. As we get out to gather the gascan we decide its a bad idea to walk around just carrying it, so we transfer the almost full gallon to the huge empty cup from the gas station and start walking through the park.

We somehow decide to forget about swing and just set the cup on the rock in the middle of the tony little stream. Me and Johan get out our trusty flamethrowers and light it up. The plastic cup burns down to about the level of the gas and then stops as the gas slowly burns off. Now Johan and Blondie seem pretty content with this, but I’m a much more experianced pyro, and a tiny little flame like that isn’t really cutting it. So I walk over to the garbage can and pick up the lid, taking careful aim from behind Johan and Bondie.

I let fly and nail the cup dead on, sending it spilling over into the stream. The fire reacts as you pyro’s out there know it would, immediately flamming up. Johan and Blondie scream in surprise and start running for the car, and I follow along, laughing and wheezing much to much to actually run. I get a about halfway there and look over my children and holy shit people. The flames are, I kid you not, 1o feet high and and 5 feet across, slowly spreading across the water and floating downstream. I resume my laughing stumble towards the car as both Johan and Blondie yell at me to hurry the fuck up. I finally make it and turn back to see the fire still spreading downstream, to big to actually tell how big. We all pile into the truck and speed away for the last time, me and Blondie laughing our asses off and Johan semi-freaking out as we look for cops.

They drop me back off at my car and Johan goes to take Blondie home. I decide to drive back by the park, just to see if it got reported and if we did any actual damage. I was pretty sure we didn’t, since the ground was wet we had done it away from any flamable structures. And low and behold, when I drive by it looks the same as itt always done. No flames, no charred buildings, no cops and no firetruck.

And truth be told, in hindsight, I’m completely happy that nothing really happened in response. We were young and dumb and not thinking about the consequences, and prolly would have hated ourselves if anything happened.

So there ya go people, now ya can see first hand that its true: Nothing good ever happens after 2 am.