Just Like Bump Bailey

Talk about a Bump Bailey like crash - my dad somewhat unceremoniously knocked over the mailbox last winter trying to back into the driveway, trying to execute a miraculous move like the Natural outfielder did before plowing into the right field wall. Like Bump, the mailbox died on contact.  Dad tried to resurrect it with ingenuity, propping it up with a couple 2x4s, but it now stands hilariously just a few feet off the ground at a 2-year-old’s cubby height, held up all winter by the frozen ground but now leaning like Pisa. Mom already thought he was ridiculously limited before this – “but this takes the prize” she said. The mailman has to almost get on his knees to put the mail into the box. “He complained saying it was causing him back pain” and one day the mailman couldn’t even get up from his crouch and injured himself so much he had to file a worker’s compensation claim with the postal service. It’s a looming healthcare crisis if you ask me and I’m not sure it’s stoppable.  This all started because the snow plower guy said dad should back in since it would be easier at his age for him to pull out onto the busy road. Like a lot of old folks born during WWII, Dad’s not as adept at things as he used to be but his car reversal skills have candidly never been good.  He twice knocked over the lamp post with the Blue Dodge when I was a kid and even passed on the gene to me – after I asked Shelley Hughes to the senior prom in 1990, I got back in the Chevy Chevette, put the stick shift in reverse and knocked over their basketball hoop. Going backwards is apparently a genetic disease for us. The good news is Shelley still went to the prom with me and her dad Dave merely shook his head as he looked down at the fallen hoop that cold day in February, the ground still frozen here in the northeast. “You got your dad’s problem huh,” Mr. Hughes said. Yes, Mr. Hughes, apparently it’s in the genes.