The McCollumn - 8/19: 'Sir, were you aware your mailbox was on fire?'

Two quotes have dominated my thoughts for the last few days, making it nearly impossible to sleep, think or do anything of consequence since early Monday morning.

A knock at the front door woke me up around midnight, and standing there was a uniformed Opelika police officer there to ask me the headline-creating question:

“Sir, were you aware your mailbox was on fire?”

Even at midnight and awaking from a fairly solid sleep, I felt the need to tamper down the Cliffish answer of “Yes, I just stepped back inside to get the marshmallows,” and answered with a quick, frantic “No.”

The officer then walked me down to the end of the driveway, where members of the Opelika Fire department were standing around to make sure the post receptacle was no longer a fire threat.

Gone was the temporary home for letters from far away loved ones, bills and my much-beloved weekly copy of The New Yorker.

“Who would do this?” I thought as I saw the charred remains of my mailbox. “What could make someone hate me so much that they’d even begin to think of doing this?”

As I lost myself in a fantasy world of self-pity and shock at viewing the smoldering embers, the officer asked another question, the other quote that has been bothering me for days:

“Do you know of anyone who would hate you enough to do this?”

When presented with such a question in the cold lucidity of early morning, my brain responded in the affirmative.

That scared me.

While I’ve only been alive for 25 short years, I knew full well there were indeed individuals I had angered enough to warrant them destroying my property.

I’m not proud of that statement. No person should ever measure their self-worth by how many people they are able to piss off in their lives.

I didn’t mention names to the officer that night, as I thought further reflection might dredge up a name or two I might overlook in the immediacy of the event.

I took a few days, writing names on a “Suspected Mailbox Arsonist” list, but eventually crossing each name on the list off said list as evidence or my own rational thinking took over.

He couldn’t have done it. His drunk side is the only version of him to have the stones to do it, and Drunk Him makes a racket you would have heard.

No way it was her. Pretty sure it’s hard to get out of a state mental facility – even in California.

With no viable suspects of my own, I’m left to believe that my mailbox was torched not for some sinister purpose, some sort of vengeance for a previous evil I visited on someone, but because of a constant scourge on our great nation: those damn punk teenagers.

Punk teenagers, let me offer you a life lesson I learned at a young age from the Scooby-Doo Mysteries. This may be a lesson you are not aware of because your generation tends to watch Japanese monster cartoons that cause seizures or the iCarly (whatever the hell that is).

Teenagers are meant to ride around in a hippie van with a talking dog to help solve mysteries, not create them.

Spend your time checking out strange goings-on at dilapidated buildings; you’re bound to find a creepy old caretaker who is dressing up like a Frankenstein monster to scare away new tenants.

Be a force of good in your community, not some damn hooligans who burn down federal property for your kicks.

And, yes, if they do catch you, I am going to report the crime, as it is a federal offense.

I hear federal prison can be fun.

Just don’t drop the soap, kids.