Mailbox Pranks And Military Pride

Earlier this week, an “06880” reader signing herself only “Mrs. Veteran” wrote:

This morning we woke up to our mailbox smashed down. It’s an age-old vandalism/prank of high school kids. This time an extremely large pumpkin took it down.

This is a continuing problem. Our neighbors dealt with it for weeks on end a few years ago. They took steps to make sure they weren’t targeted again, by putting metal poles on either side of their mailboxes. In the dark they were not visible, so the kids got a nasty surprise when they tried to take out the mailboxes with baseball bats.

My husband’s mellow attitude is “kids are kids, and this sucks.”

However, I will mention that he is a veteran who served over a decade in the U.S. Army. His Middle East tours lasted up to 14 months at a time.

I think kids in this town need a reality check sometimes, as they drive their BMWs to school or speed down neighborhood streets not considering the lives they could take (children and pets). And I know that not all Westport kids drive BMWs.

The reality check comes when they realize the mailbox they took out belongs to a veteran, a man who served his country to give them the very freedom to throw a pumpkin and damage our property. At this very moment that veteran and his young child are in the garage fixing our mailbox. That’s the same whose entire first year of life he missed — crawling, walking, talking, laughing, smiling, etc. — to fight on foreign soil for their freedom.

I won’t have any way of knowing if these kids read “06880,” but I would appreciate some sort of acknowledgement, even if it’s on behalf of others who had their mailboxes taken down, others who are not comfortable stating their feelings, and others who may just read this and say, “I wonder what my kid was doing last night.”