Brick mailbox vs. 1991 Accord

So a couple of Friday nights ago, we get a knock on the door.  Oops:

This is the end result of our mailbox vs. a 1991 Accord (in the driveway across the street), driven by a friend of the neighbor teenaged girl.  As you can see, the mailbox perished, but it got a hell of a shot in on the car as it went down.

Her mother came to visit about 20 minutes later and asked me what she could do.  I told her that as far as I was concerned this was the kind of thing that people made way too much of these days, and she shouldn’t worry about it.  I’d take care of it.  She had a car to fix and a daughter to talk to, and I’d be pleased to remove my mailbox from her list.  She was delightedly thankful.

OK, so here’s what I’ve learned about our brick mailbox accident since then:

• There is no applying silicone liberally and setting the thing back on its base (which looked ludicrously possible to me, through a slight beer haze, at 9:45 on a Friday night).  See, bricks are heavy.  That bit that Aaron’s sitting on is solid, not hollow, and weighs in the neighborhood of 1500 pounds.  Therefore:
• The young lady smacked the hell out of it.  She threw it 12 feet or so.  30 mph?  35?
• My rotary hammer, impulse-purchased on eBay ten years ago, has been my best friend.  With a clay spade, it made short work of the hole I needed for the temporary mailbox on the other side of the driveway.  With chisel and bull-point bits, it’s made breaking the carnage down into manageable pieces tolerable, if still not exactly fun.
• Practically speaking, I may have been a little too nice just letting the whole thing go.  But I did, and I’m not going to try to undo it, even though I probably could without a problem.

Aw, I don’t know.  Stuff like this?  You know?  I had reasonable and justified cause to get help with this, and gave it away.  Fine line between charitable and stupid, perhaps, but are enough people just kind anymore?  Could this play balance for some ridiculous bit of litigiousness somewhere else in the world?  Do I believe in karma?  Should I have suggested that her mother “pay it forward”?  Isn’t a steady stream of questions obnoxious?

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