Love Me, Love My Mailbox

We live in a gated community and pay a fairly hefty maintenance sum for the privilege. The bulk of the money from this monthly fee goes to the management company so it can send us an almost constant barrage of letters telling us to do something to our mailbox.

You see, the homeowners association mandated that everyone in the development have an identical mailbox painted the identical pale green color. These mailboxes are not made of metal or plastic, but of a much classier material called wood. This would be lovely except that in South Florida, our weather is broken into: Hurricane Season, Rainy Season, and Humid Season. Each of these seasons shares a common element called moisture. Wood and moisture do not peacefully coexist, so we are always getting letters.

Paint your mailbox. Caulk your mailbox. Replace the numbers on your mailbox. Paint your mailbox again. And then recently, we received a new one: straighten your tilted mailbox.

My what?  I walked outside and stood a few feet back into the road, gazing at my mailbox the way art patrons pose themselves in front of their favorite Jackson Pollack. With my elbow crooked and my chin resting in my hand, I attempted to understand this most recent demand: Straighten the tilted mailbox.

"This is tilted?" I thought, the same way the uncultured masses might think, "Isn't this Jackson Pollack just scribbles?"

I tilted my head one way and then the other. Ricky got out the level, and we plopped it on top of the mailbox. The little floaty globule was barely off center. Even so, in the spirit of good citizenship, we complied. We paid a guy to come out and dig and prop and fill and measure until the box was absolutely, perfectly level. And just for good measure, we painted it, too! And cleaned the metal numbers! It was a thing of beauty.

Until two months later when we got another letter that said: Please replace rotted mailbox. Rotted! After all that? Perhaps too much moisture from the Humid Season has gotten into the brains of the homeowners association. I'd be happy to straighten them out with my level.