But it came from a mailbox. I was sitting in the back seat of a rusty Honda Civic with the window rolled down. A few empty beer cans rattle around at my feet. A goofy grin on my face. It had stopped raining, the evening sun was shining and the silver steel of the car was covered in golden drops. My buddy had just put a firework in an empty pack of Marlboro Reds, lit the fuse, put it in the mailbox and ran.
Of course we didn’t know that at the time. We were just teenagers fooling around. There was no one around. I’m not proud of it. But I often wonder about this moment. I wonder how thin the line is between luck and fate. I wonder how the course of my life would have been different if the mailbox my buddy tried to destroy hadn’t belonged to a member of the state police.