Definitions:
- B-Pillar:
- A support post that connects a vehicle's roof to its body at the rear of the front doors, both driver’s and passenger’s.
- Twilight Time:
- Twilight Time is the transitional midpoint between day and night or night and day.
- It is the period before sunrise and after sunset in which the atmosphere is partially illuminated by the sun, and it is neither dark nor light.
- Twilight is the period between light and darkness, or dark and lightness, when the sun is below the horizon.
It was a few minutes before the official sunrise time.
Although not yet officially risen, the sun was already dimly illuminating everything.
Timmy loved Twilight Time, and most people thought there was only one of them each day. But along with the sunset Twilight Time, there was a similar sunrise Twilight Time.
Since he was a boy, whether during the evening or morning Twilight Times, Timmy always imagined a battle being waged between the sun and moon. At night, the sun was battling to stay in view and in the morning the moon did the same.
Timmy knew some evening the moon would recede and the sun would reverse course and rise and win the battle! And the opposite would happen one morning when the much smaller and weaker moon finally beat the sun back behind the eastern horizon!
Timmy warmed up his car and rolled down his driveway and made a left out of it, which would start his daily journey to work.
When he got onto the street, he immediately noticed Mrs. Jenkins standing at the end of her driveway. This was a usual site as Timmy’s normal departure for work and Mrs. Jenkins trip down her driveway to fetch the daily paper coincided most of the time.
But today, she wasn’t standing there perusing the front page and nodding hello to him. This time she was kneeling and crying.
She knelt above a pile of splintered wood and mail, the shattered remains of her mailbox. Her grandson had made her that now demolished mailbox in the shape of a barn, complete with a working weather vane and all.
He immediately knew that the usual suspects of miscreant teenaged thugs were to blame.
Timmy imagined one of those thugs hanging halfway out of the car, a Louisville Slugger held with both hands as if they were in the batter’s box. He saw the entire brutal travesty play out.
In his mind’s eye, he stood, invisible to them, to the left of the mailbox. It was 2am and he saw the car coming with its lights off.
As the car came within ten feet, the scene became slow motion, and high definition.
He heard the engine rev as the car picked up speed.
He saw the bat-wielding passenger thug slowly emerge from the passenger side window and steady his feet on the seat. He then drew the bat as far back as he could for maximum impact, most of his body weight leaning against the B-Pillar under his right armpit.
He heard the driver and backseat passengers chanting:
“Swing batta batta batta, Sa-wing batta!”
The thug started his swing four feet before the mailbox and hit the mini barn, complete with a working weather vane and all, square, and it was no more.
Timmy said: “I am sorry for your loss Mrs. Jenkins. I have a feeling these thugs are going to pay for what they did to you” and he got back in his car.
There were 11 mailboxes on his street, and all but his lie in ruins.
Planning for such vandalism, Timmy had installed a heavy duty metal mailbox that the thugs were smart to avoid.
All of the other mailboxes were wooden or flimsy thin metal types. Those had no chance.
The police were called but no home surveillance cameras could provide clear enough video.
One week later…..
1:48am. The thugs are out driving, the Louisville Slugger sitting in the lap of the passenger seat thug, looking for more victims.
They doused their headlights and came down Timmy’s street once again.
Many of the mailboxes hadn’t been replaced yet, but up ahead they saw a perfectly frail and vulnerable red, rectangular wooden one. Their excitement grew as they loved demolishing wooden mailboxes, like Mrs. Jenkins’, as they exploded and splintered into a million pieces.
Metal ones only got dented and many could be reused.
Wooden mailboxes could never be reused.
The thugs loved that.
For a brief moment the driver thug was confused. Wasn’t this the house with the heavy metal mailbox they avoided last time?
Then the worry was gone as quick as it came. Shame.
He hit the gas for maximum impact.
Passenger seat thug got ready.
Timmy was proud as the imaginary scenario he conjured standing with Mrs. Jenkins as she cried the week before was spot on.
The bat-wielding thug slowly emerged from the passenger side window and steadied his feet on the seat. He then drew the bat as far back as he could for maximum impact, most of his body weight leaning against the B-Pillar under his right armpit.
The driver and backseat passengers chanted:
“Swing batta batta batta, Sa-wing batta!”
The thug started his swing four feet before the perfectly frail and vulnerable red, rectangular wooden mailbox and hit it square.
The passenger thug was ripped from the car and his flesh and muscles from his right armpit down to his waist were ripped off against the B-Pillar. X-Rays would later reveal four broken vertebrae and three broken ribs. Two of those splintered ribs punctured his right lung.
The bat had obliterated the perfectly frail and vulnerable red, rectangular wooden mailbox, but it had no effect on Timmy’s real mailbox which sat right beside it, exactly where it had been the week before.
Hitting that was exactly what it sounds like, swinging a bat full force into an immovable 40 pound metal box while traveling at 50 MPH, hanging out of a passenger side car window.
Timmy was watching all the while from an upstairs window and he smiled at the perfect execution of his plan.
He knew his enemy would return.
He knew the exact trap to lay.
The uninjured thugs put the injured thug into the car and sped off.
Timmy went outside. He had his cleaning supplies ready. He took them and his garden hose to the end of the driveway.
Within 5 minutes there was no indication anything had transpired at the end of his driveway.
He brought the Louisville Slugger, now in two pieces, and the shattered pieces of the decoy perfectly frail and vulnerable red, rectangular wooden mailbox, into his backyard, and burned them in his firepit.
Thugs 10, Timmy 1.
