The Day After

This is not a political post.  It relates some important (to me, at least) things that happened on the day following the election.

On my drive home from work, I was pulled over by a state police officer on the interstate.  I hadn't done anything wrong, but he let me know that my car's tail lights weren't working.  (I'll see if I can get a service appt. today during my lunch break, lest I get pulled over again tonight.)

Later during my drive, a car pulled up next to me at a stop sign and flashed a flashlight at me.  The driver rolled down his window and informed me that my tail lights were out.  What are the chances that two people let me know the same thing in a span of twenty minutes?  (What are the chances that I've been driving like that for a while?)

At 9:30 last night, I happened to be looking out one of my house's front windows when I saw headlights and tail lights pass by very fast in front of the house, accompanied by the sound of a soda can being run over.  The next instant, my brain processed that there was something else metal in front of the house...  You guessed it:  our mailbox had been smashed -- for the third time this year!

I phoned the police and asked to file a report.  I had trouble falling asleep, possibly because I was stressing about the mailbox.  The phone rang; it was the police department apologizing that they hadn't sent anyone yet.  I got back into bed and tried slowing my heart rate.  It must have worked, because I had just dropped off to sleep when the phone rang again.  It was the police officer in front of the house, asking me to come outside.

The officer took my name and phone number, which I had already given when I first called, and my birthdate, which I hadn't been asked for earlier.  As she pointed her flashlight around (and that was one darned powerful flashlight; I wonder if they can be bought by private citizens), we saw a bit of pumpkin on the mailbox latch, two orange spots on the sidewalk and driveway, where the pumpkin had bounced, and the pumpkin itself, where it had finally come to rest in our yard.

When I picked up the pumpkin this morning, I saw that it had been an entire pumpkin (although the stem and portion of the fruit had broken off, very similar to the way carvers will open the pumpkin), and seeds had scattered on the sidewalk and front yard.  I'll have to give the poor thing a proper burial in the compost pile this weekend.

No, I am not so culturally ignorant that I'm unaware of the band called Smashing Pumpkins, but I certainly never expected to encounter one of their members on a quiet street in Albuquerque.