Was briefly living with my grandma at 12. She worked weird hours and was basically never home. No rules, no supervision. I ran amok every night, long after all the other kids were called home. I'm prone to "incredible thoughts", and one weekend, it occurred to me that it would be devastatingly funny to remove every house number from every house on our street "to fuck with the mailman". I did not know the mailman, had never seen him/her, there was no vendetta, no rationale.
I knew it would be a fuckin herculean task requiring tools and equipment, so I made an itemized list of everything I'd need - both types of screwdrivers, contractor bags, scrapers (butter knives and shit), a place to stash the loot. Next night, at the STROKE of midnight cause I'm a goffick champion, the work begins.
It was SO much harder than I thought it would be. There were SPIDERS on so much of it, screws rusted into place, cumbersome wood plaques, metal signs, every kind of decorative thing, house numbers carved into big goddamn rocks. Occasionally, I'd think of how perplexed the mailman was gonna be and literally fall to the ground in hysterics, stuffing my shirt in my mouth to keep from howling with laughter.
It took fuckin HOURS, and three contractor bags full of house numbers lugged home to the asshole of my closet. I pretended to be The Grinch, stealing Christmas and again was destroyed by the hilarity and greatness of this idea. By 5am, I had done it, and was completely fuckin exhausted. Pretty much forgot all about it within a week. One day my grandmother was bringing laundry into my closet, saw the bags, looked inside, looked at me, closed it back up and left. Never asked, I never told. In fact, I've never told anyone until just now.
I was the terror of a little town in New York 20 years ago, and I'm not the least bit sorry.
Enjoy your day.
