Bombproof

In the 80s, we had a far more widespread culture of suspicion in SA than we do today. Whites were suspicious of their own shadows -- because they were black. And blacks were suspicious of whites, because they had black shadows. I was suspicious of everyone, including myself at times. So I made sure that our mission post was delivered to a church up the road from our small, inconspicuous office that just happened to be in the same street as a conservative evangelical church.

Well, times have changed ... but not that much. People are still deeply suspicious of people like me; and I am still profoundly suspicious of everyone, but I've come to accept that I'll always have a dark shadow. So when we moved our mission office to a bigger but equally inconspicuous suburban house, I felt that our mail still could not be delivered to our door. Who knows, the postman could easily be a commie bastard spying for the regime. Or worse, an atheist assassin who may try unsuccessfully to take me out but perhaps fatally wound one of my staff members.

Turns out my decision to have our post delivered to the old lady's address two houses from our mission office was God-inspired. This morning, a letterbomb exploded in her postbox.

I usually get to the office bright and early and make sure I collect the post from her box before she does -- the old wrinkled dinosaur is still completely unaware that her postbox is shared by the secretive people down the road. So this morning I'm a little late because Liberty was having a series of convulsions near the rose bushes -- I thought he was demon possessed at first, but now I suspect the repeated hits to the head during paintball. I've got to stop using those frozen pellets.

But I digress ...

So I'm speeding down the road toward the mission office, when I see the old duck strolling down the path in her dressing gown. Towards the postbox. I screeched to a halt, rolled out in dramatic special forces fashion, dived over her thankfully low fence and shoved her facedown onto the wet lawn. Just in time. The postbox exploded in a million lethal fragments of wood and metal. A letterbomb. Obviously an assassination attempt. And obviously not a hit on the old lady.

I debriefed the traumatised fossil, making her believe that some rebellious pagan child from up the road had detonated one too many firecrackers in her postbox and that I would be teaching the little swine a good lesson. She knows all about the paintball episode last Halloween -- my version, of course -- and so is in favour of me administering righteous discipline on kids who follow the Dark Lord.

I've built her a new postbox made from the same material used to build the space shuttle. The next letterbomb that goes off will hardly dent the postbox and will definitely sound like a substandard Pakistani firecracker exploding several blocks away. If I happen to be delayed by another one of Liberty's demon-like convulsions, she'll simply assume a hungry pack of snails ate her mail.

Fight the good fight. And please send emails rather than normal post ... I can't be held responsible for your incinerated mail.