The Envelope

The world is a big, yet small place.  The following story is completely true; the names have been changed to protect the parties involved.

I was the typical teenage girl who was attracted to bad guys.  You know the type rebels, tough guys, the kind that your parents warned you about. Well, when I was younger, thankfully I grew out of this stage, I started talking to this guy, we will call him Tyler Durden (cute huh?).  Tyler Durden was my best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend. I started talking to him one night.  We became close and we talked every day for hours. Well Tyler got in trouble and ended up going to Boy’s School, which is also known as Juvenile.  I never did know exactly what he did to get in there.  I pretty much stopped talking to him, we would occasionally send each other letters while he was in Boy’s School. I decided that I didn’t really want to per sue anything with Tyler because he was not a good guy to be around and I met another guy which I will call Bob Marley.  Bob was not much better than Tyler, he used to live under a bridge. He was pretty much a hippie and not a really good guy to hang around either but I was young and dumb and I thought I was in love. 

I pretty much stopped responding to Tyler after I started dated Bob.  I wasn’t really interested anymore and I still didn’t know what he did. However I did think it would be cool to date my best friend’s boy friend’s best friend.  Tyler would still send me letters and call me when he could. One day my mom decided to get the mail. I think it was a weekend day. So, she saw the Boy’s School stamp saying this letter was from an inmate.  My mom knew I was dating Bob Marley and the letter had hand written on it Bob Marley.  They would give you a set amount of envelopes and when you ran out you were out of luck.  My mom was pretty upset for two reasons, her teenage daughter was receiving mail from an inmate and it was from someone who was named Bob Marley.  I explained that it wasn’t my Bob Marley and told her the truth about who it was. I was forbidden to talk to Tyler Durden. After things with Bob Marley didn’t work out, I was talking to Tyler Durden again for a little while longer. I gave him my friend’s address and he sent the letters to her.  I found out that Tyler ran out of envelopes and borrowed one from  Bob Marley whose real name is a very common first and last name. It was a sheer coincidence.  After that I stopped talking to Tyler Durden.   This was in like May.

I am sure you are like so what, people have the same names all the time, but it gets weirder.

In October, I was home from school, I had been sick, I was on AOL in a chatroom. I started talking to this  random guy and I knew his name was Bob.  I didn’t want to type anymore so I gave him my number and he called me. The caller id said something like Martha Marley.  I thought wow another one? Well it is a pretty common name after all there must be millions of Bob Marley’s out there.  Then I was like thinking about it while I talked to him and asked him, figuring he would have no clue what I was talking about, Do you know a guy named Tyler Durden?  He responded yeah, I was in Boy’s School with him.  I squeaked out, I got your envelope.

Amy Lea, Who are you?

I have a pretty common maiden name. So common that my mom’s best friend happens to have the same last name as my mom does. I used to baby sit for her son and I would use her as a reference. I always had to put no relation in parenthesis. So, they would know I wasn’t giving a family member as a reference. They even team taught together so it I am sure got a little confusing as they worked together at more than one school. I have known her for many years. I was used to knowing a lot of people that I wasn’t related to with my same last name. It was nothing new for me. Until that day……

I was probably a freshman in high school, maybe it started before that, but I would get the mail, there it was. A sorority newsletter for a woman named Amy Lea and my last name. I was like oh they must have had a mix up at the post office, no it was my address. So I did what any good citizen would have done and wrote return to sender on it. It wasn’t a bill or anything but I didn’t want this woman’s sorority newsletter because no one by that name lived there. I didn’t even know the woman. I thought nothing of it and until we received another one a while later. I did the same old return to sender hoping that they would get the hint. Nope. We kept getting them. We started writing No one at this address, wrong address and then eventually we moved. We thought OK hopefully they got the idea that the Amy Lea from their sorority does not live here and the new neighbors can figure out what to do with her sorority newsletters, and letters because return to sender was not working.

Once we were in our new home we were finally relieved to be set free of the Anchora mailings for Ms. Amy Lea. Until, I got the mail and I saw the envelope and it addressed to Amy Lea. I wrote return to sender again. I even told the mailman this person does not and has never lived here. I have no clue who she is. Then it was time for their mailings, once again, there was Amy Lea in my mail box. I think by this time my mom called the sorority and said we keep getting this persons letters and newsletters from you. Please stop sending them you have the wrong addresses. She did it politely of course. The letters and newsletters stopped. We used to make jokes about which of us was really Amy Lea. I was afraid that I would see that envelope or newsletter waiting for me when I opened my mailbox every time I got the mail. Well by this time we moved again.

I remember getting the mail and the first time I saw another letter or newsletter from the Sorority I said Oh no Mom she’s back! It wasn’t like we were getting this woman’s mail. We were not getting anything of hers other than the sorority mailings. It would be completely different if we were getting her bills and other letters. We did the whole return to sender, calling, writing she doesn’t live here thing again. I think I even tried finding an email address for the sorority. This time it didn’t stop. We just kept sending them back over and over again.

We moved a couple more times, and each time the letters would come. It was like the sorority was stalking us. It wasn’t a forwarded envelope, it was just a typed envelope. We did not know Amy Lea. I think we looked for her in the phone book, and didn’t find one. It was just the strangest thing. When we moved to Florida, the sorority found us there too and the Amy Lea letters and newsletters kept coming. None of our names are close to Amy, we have no Amy’s in our family, not even anything that could be remotely close to Amy. We had done everything short of getting a restraining order against the sorority.

We haven’t received one in a long time, I am scared that tomorrow, when I get the mail, it will be there waiting for me…….

This time if it happens, I will find them, and tell them to kindly knock it off, they have been harassing me through the mail for the last fourteen years.

Pippi Longstocking Day

In a post I wrote about my friend Adrianna, I said that I would write a post about Pippi Longstocking Day. We were hanging out at her house. We had a picnic of Papa John’s Pizza and decided to eat it in the woods behind her house. Well we got lost in the woods and thought we would have to live in the woods because we didn’t think we would ever get out. Of course the wood was not that big and we managed to get out of the woods.

Later we decided to clean up the house because it was a mess. Well we decided to run the dishwasher at least. We loaded it up and put in the soap and thought we would go play basketball in her driveway. We shot hoops for a while and came back inside. We noticed that the floor was all wet and very soapy. It looked like something straight out of a sitcom. We figured out that you can’t put Dawn in the dishwasher. It said so on the label but who really reads the label? Not us apparently. Her parents were gone and we didn’t want to get in trouble. See, Adrianna’s parents are very nice but they are also very strict sometimes.

I decided to call the 1800 number and hope and pray for the best. Somehow we managed to get all the soap out of the dishwasher and then we were just left with the mess. The expensive dishwasher was fine. So, being the brilliant young women we are decided to steal a page out of Pippi Longstocking’s playbook and use sponges on our feet and “mop” up the mess. We also used many towels and it was quite comical and scary at the same time. The floor was very slippery and time was ticking away fast. We were also soaked. We were worried that they would come home and find out what happened. We were really worried that we wouldn’t be able to be friends anymore and that we would get in so much trouble. It took what seemed forever to get it all cleaned up. We changed our clothes, so there wasn’t any evidence. We didn’t speak a word of Pippi Longstocking Day to anyone.

I spent the night at Adrianna’s that night. It was a very stormy night, so we decided to sleep in the basement. We were watching TV and playing really late. Her house had a really sensitive security system and they of course had it on, so we had to make sure we didn’t slam doors, or make too much noise. That was nothing new though. As we were lying in bed watching TV at midnight, the doorbell rang. It scared us. Who shows up at someone’s house at midnight? Adrianna’s parents are very respectable and responsible adults so no one would just show up without calling. Someone checked but there was no one out there. That really freaked us out. We managed to be able to fall asleep after such a long and crazy day.

The next morning we woke up to sirens and flashing lights. We found out that a house couple doors down had been struck by lightning. The family had kids that Adrianna was friends with, so we played with them sometimes. It was really scary but thankfully no one was hurt. We found out that when the lightning struck the neighbors house the doorbell rang at Adrianna’s house and wait for it………

BROKE AND FRIED ADRIANNA’S FAMILY’S DISHWASHER.

The dishwasher we were so concerned about not breaking less than 24 hours before.