Nancy’s Mom

I should have known they would do things differently. They were from Canada and just a little bit foreign. Nancy invited me for lunch on a Saturday. It had to be a Saturday or a vacation day from school. Otherwise we would have to eat lunch at school. Anyway, I was at Nancy’s house and her mother was fixing us some lunch. Nancy had an obnoxious brother who kept getting into our Barbie things and goofing everything up. He was going to eat lunch with us too.

Nancy’s mom, that’s all I remember calling her, set our lunch plates in front of us. There were some potato chips and a pickle, but to my dismay, there sat a tuna fish sandwich with lettuce. I had never eaten a tuna fish sandwich before. I had never eaten a tuna fish anything before. Lettuce on a sandwich was also very foreign. I didn’t know what to do. I was a guest and a guest is always to eat what is placed in front of her. That’s the polite thing to do. But, tuna fish? Did I have to go that far to maintain foreign relations? I decided I couldn’t and resolved I wouldn’t go as far as that.

Meekly, while staring straight at my plate, I said, “I don’t like tuna fish.” Nancy’s mom turned toward me. I could feel her do this rather than see her, since I still stared at my plate.

“Have you ever tried tuna fish before?" she asked. Oh no, now what do I do? She’ll think me a fool if I say I haven’t but do I dare lie? No, I wouldn’t lie. Not that I couldn’t lie, I was capable. This situation just didn’t seem worth carrying around the guilt of a lie.

“No . . .”, I answered, my voice trailing off to barely audible tones. Then she started in on a full blown lecture on manners and how her children had been exposed to all sorts of different foods. She named numerous vegetables, fruits, and entrees many of which I’d never heard of before. She was very proud about how she had taught her children to eat anything put on their plates without question. Inside my head I wished I could be at home right now eating FrancoAmerican spaghetti. She concluded by telling me I had to at least eat half the sandwich.

I remembered when my mother had made my little sister and me sit at the table and eat some liver. I was willing to sit there until Doomsday and not touch the stuff, but my sister felt she should give it try. One bite was all it took and Susan gagged and vomited onto her plate. Was I going to have to vomit before this lady understood that tuna fish was way beyond my powers of experimentation?

Lips quivering, I slowly brought the sandwich up to my mouth and bit off the tiniest bite. You couldn’t even tell I had touched it. Nancy’s mom looked at me in total disgust and said, “Oh, you are ridiculous!. Don’t expect to come here for lunch again.” She withdrew my plate from the table in one fell swoop. I felt so humiliated. I decided on my walk back home that the next time I ate at someone’s home, I would eat what they served no matter what.

Several years later, my promise came back to haunt me when Kathy Anderson invited me for dinner. I accepted. Of course I was much more mature now (11 instead of 7) and anyway, I reasoned, Kathy’s family had the same last name as me. They were Swedish, we Norwegian. How different could things be?

Kathy and I appeared at the doorway between the hall and the kitchen and in unison we asked Mrs. Anderson, “What’s for dinner?” I really did my best to maintain an appropriate level of enthusiasm when she replied, “Chicken livers.” The left side of my top lip really wanted to curl up and my left eye really wanted to squint. But, I bravely kept up appearances. I kept thinking of Nancy’s mom and that whole experience. I thought of my promise. Would I be brave or would I make my excuses and run for home? Certainly Kathy would save the day and ask her mom if we could have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead. To my chagrin, she said, “Oh yum!”

To this day I am puzzled by “Oh yum!”

That night, I ate those chicken livers, not one, but three of them. I was making up for my past sins. I hated every bite. Each one was a chore made possible by great quantities of milk. They must have thought me to possess the healthiest bones in Indiana for the amount of milk I consumed during that meal. I have never touched chicken livers since nor cow liver for that matter. But, tuna fish I have learned to really like.

The first time I fixed my own children tuna fish sandwiches, in an effort to indoctrinate them early, to my surprise they gobbled them up without a word of complaint. Nancy's mom would be proud of my children.

Copyright DJ Anderson 2005

Is This the Party to Whom I Think I Am Speaking?

As I read the letter addressed to my husband from the Pennsylvania funeral home, my first thoughts were of Mark Twain’s cable, from London to the press in the United States after his obituary was mistakenly published. The cable read: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

The case of mistaken identity began within a few days after our move to Atlanta two years ago. In fact, they began as soon as we had a listed telephone number. I was not working at the time and was thus home to answer every phone call.

“Mrs. Walker?” she began sweetly.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Is your husband’s name Simon E. Walker?”

“Yes.”

“Is his social security number 123-4516-0980?”

“No.”

“Is his birth date May 17, 1944?”

“No.”

“Have you ever or your husband ever . . .”

“Now just wait a minute,” I finally interjected. “What is this about?” An imperceptible pause followed and I imagined the person on the other end was deciding in an instant whether she should divulge the reasons for her call or not. Over time, and many calls later, I found that sometimes the callers would divulge, and sometimes they wouldn’t.

If the person did spill the beans to me, it went something like this: “I’m with the such and such credit collection agency and have been engaged to track down Simon E. Walker from Atlanta, Georgia, in order to make arrangements for the payment of several outstanding debts.”

“But, I have already told you that the social security number and birth date you have on record do not belong to my husband.”

“Is your name Pam?”

“No, it is not.” Another pause, usually longer than the first.

“How long have you lived in Atlanta?”

“Not that it’s any of your business since you obviously have the wrong person but about two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” she asked with incredulity dripping from her tone.

“Yes, two weeks.”

“Perhaps your husband is not the man we seek.”

“No, my husband is definitely not the man you seek.”

All in all, I think I spoke to fifteen different members of various credit collection agencies trying to track down the indigent Simon E. Walker of Atlanta, Georgia, who owed something to what seemed like just about everyone in the United States. Six months after we moved to Atlanta, Mr. Sixteenth caller rang our phone. We began down the now ritualistic inquiry path but this time I asked, “Mr. Sixteenth Caller, you sound like an intelligent person. You already know from my answers that you have the wrong Simon E. Walker. Is there any way you can get word to the person who has published our phone number to your company as a possible lead, to communicate that they’re barking up the wrong tree?” Mr. Sixteenth Caller agreed that he might be able to accomplish this task and indeed he did. We haven’t received another call since.

Last May, however, we began receiving a different kind of phone call. This time it was an electronic voice. It was always the same voice and the same message. Sometimes one of us would pick up the phone and hear it, other times it would be on our message machine. This time, the call came every single day including Sunday. “Hello!” the perky voice began, “This is Heather Kelly and I want to hear from you. This is not a sales solicitation so please call 1-888-123-4567 Monday through Friday.” When it became obvious that perky Heather Kelly’s voice was going to harass us until doomsday, I got to work doing some research on the internet. Turns out Heather Kelly is a front for a collection agency. From my research, her voice is harassing hundreds of people around the country who are delinquent on their Sprint bills. Only problem is that none of the people she is harassing have ever done business with Sprint except maybe the unfortunate “other” Simon E. Walker in Atlanta, Georgia. Because we are members of the “No-call List,” I used the system to report the problem. Within ten days, Heather stopped calling and so far we have been free from credit agency calls of any kind.

The final mix-up came to light a few months ago. A letter addressed to my husband arrived from a company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When Simon opened the envelope and read the letter he turned to me and asked, “Did you know you were dead?” I looked at the letter and enclosed pamphlet from the funeral home that sent the mailing. Simon was given six options for his dearly departed wife’s headstone—four of them were double headstones with engravings like “Together Forever,” and “On Earth and Now in Heaven.” All I can think is that poor Pam, the wife of the man born in 1944 with social security number 123-4516-0980 is dead. May she rest in peace.

copyright DJ Anderson, 2007