Watch This!

In one of his stand up routines comedian Jeff Foxworthy reported that the most common last words spoken by redneck men are: “Watch this!”

Last summer I was ready to pull out of our driveway onto the country road where we live, and I sensed something was out of place – our mailbox was missing. Someone had pulled our mailbox, on its concrete-anchored 4” X  4” cedar pole, out of the ground and dragged it behind a bush several feet away. I stared at it for awhile trying to reconstruct what happened.

I'm pretty sure the incident involved at least two mating-aged males. And I'm pretty sure it started out in a moving vehicle with a conversation that went something like this:

“Bubba.”

“What?”

“I bet I can pull a mailbox out of the ground.”

“Betcha can't.”

“Yeah? Well just pull over right here and hold my brewski.”

“You're crazy.”

“Okay now, watch this!”

(A little grunting and growling.) 

“Whoa stud! You have just committed a federal crime!”

Doing stupid stuff may give you something to talk about at the tavern on Saturday night; or in the county lock-up on Sunday morning; but it doesn't normally attract much of an audience unless your stupidity shows some originality.

A few years ago, here on San Juan Island, there was a spate of mailbox vandalism. Rampaging vandals with baseball bats smashed mailboxes as fast as they were repaired or replaced. (Okay, rampaging vandals is a little strong for bored small-town high schoolers.) The outrage came pretty much on the lack of creativity. One mailbox smashed in a beer-drinking, hormonal rush may show passion, but a pattern of attacks on what are essentially tin cans nailed to posts shows only a desperate, but profound, lack of imagination.

A few years ago, as I was walking home at night after working late in my office in downtown Portland, I came upon a teen-aged kid spray-painting his initials on a building. I walked over and asked him if he thought it was his right to make the world uglier. He said he thought it looked better with his name one it.

I told him that he should make something of his own if he wanted to sign it, because signing someone else's work was plagiarism and it defaced the view on my walk home. I may have raised my voice, I seem to recall that I was getting a late night voice-of-god-like echo off the surrounding buildings.

The kid started to stuff his spray can in his pocket and I asked if I could borrow it so I could sign his ass. He asked if I was crazy. I told him that people do ask that from time to time.

There are street artists in our world that create amazing, illegal works of art on blank walls. (Google Banksy's images). But scrawling your name or gang sign on the side of a building – like being the 10th person on a small island to smash a mailbox – isn't creative, it's just stupid.

That night, I followed the kid with the spray can for a block or so, asking questions that he pretended not to hear. After a while I lost interest and headed home.

I suspect that lone kid with the silver spray paint was just looking for a shortcut to lay claim to being a bad-ass. He didn't seem to have a statement to make, he just thought he needed to have his name on a public place. What little damage he'd done had been scrubbed off by the time I walked by the building the next day.

I'd like to think he stopped at some point since that night and reflected on what I'd said, but I know it probably just made him feel more angry and isolated.

It's 6:30 a.m. now and the frogs out by our pond are celebrating another sunrise. A doe has wandered out of the woods and will likely try to nibble on our camellia. And somewhere down in Portland, there's probably a young man lying in bed chuckling about the time an old guy followed him through downtown Portland babbling about creativity.