Thursday, January 27, 2011

So close to 100 posts and I crap out

How...normal of me. Yes, that's how I roll. It's a terribly bad habit, I admit. Usually when I'm really close to something being done I either forget about it or find a reason to walk away. Obviously there is some psychology behind it. But I'm not here to talk about that.

A Christmas Letter from Doris


When my mother worked the day shift at the bank (date processing center, not an actual bank with money) she worked with a lot of older women. This was over ten years ago and most of those same women are retired. One of them, Doris, sends out an email every day to whoever is on her contact list. These "letters" as she calls them are normally sent before 5am. I don't know when she started sending them but for those who receive them I'm sure it feels like forever.

I was visiting my mother and stumbled across these emails. At first it was the bad grammar, bad spelling mistakes, and terrible sentence structure that made me giggle. My mother began to email me funny ones and eventually, upon my insistence, all of them. Once, I read that day's email out loud to my girlfriend. That started frequent reading sessions which snowballed into my forwarding of the email to her.

Her friend visited us one weekend and I happened to read a "Doris letter" aloud. Now I forward the emails not only to my girlfriend, but to her friend as well. We tried to explain the humor to a bunch of friends at a party. It didn't go over well.

Christmas Eve I happened to be in the kitchen at my mother's house when the phone rang. When the caller asked for her, I kindly explained that she was seeing our guests out to their car and would be able to take the call momentarily. While carrying on an amicable conversation I was racking my brains for which one of my mother's friends this could be. I was afraid she was going to say, "Okay, just tell her I called," and hang up. That's happened to me before but I've always recognized the voice. Finally about five minutes in the called asks, "and who is this?" I reply, "oh, this is Janet's son," and to my merriment I heard over the phone, "this is Doris. Your voice changed too!"

My first thought was, duh, of course my voice changed - that's what happens, quickly followed by, holy shit it's Doris! Their mutual friend was sick and landed in the hospital which is why I assumed she was calling.

When my mother came back in the house I excitedly told her who was on the phone and handed it over. I soon found out that there was something wrong with Doris's internet connection and she was unable to send out her letters. She was afraid people would assume she was sick or dead and wondered if my mother could send an email out to all her contacts to let them know what was what.

So the reason she called wasn't because her friend was in the hospital, it was because the friend that was in the hospital is the one who would have sent out the email for her!

I jumped onto the computer and started writing the email even before my mother was off the phone. It was a Christmas miracle! I talked to Doris AND got to write my very own Doris letter.

Yes, I am that easy to please. ;)