We all have regrets, both large and small.
But the real trick is figuring out how to get away from them all…
“Hello Ashonta,1Not my wife/the Boss Lady’s real name….merely an anagram.
I was overjoyed to see Myra’s2Not my younger daughter/The Younger’s real name…but it will soon become apparent that is the point of the story. application come on for Folk school. How is her big sister doing? It’s seems like such a long time ago now that she was here…”
The Boss Lady intently watched me as I read over the email she had received from Ms. Heidi, the middle-aged hippie lady that ran the Fairy Farm where our now 9-year-old daughter, The Elder, had attended kindergarten.
“Um…maybe it was just a typo? I bet she was so excited that we might be sending our youngest child to preschool there–“
“JUST KEEP READING,” the Boss Lady firmly commanded me.
At this point, it was mid-June, and one could reasonably make the argument that we had dropped the ball in applying to potential preschools for the upcoming year. For the sake of convenience, our first choice had been the school The Elder was attending, but our lazy asses had been rightfully immediately been put on a waiting list there.
So, our backup plan, of course, was to send The Younger to join Ms. Heidi on the Fairy Farm, a delightful childhood experience in its own right.
But as I continued scanning Ms. Heidi’s reply to our application, I noticed things were amiss–such as the fact that we were applying to the preschool, not the Folk School, which was altogether a different part of the Farm.
Oh, and there was the issue of our child’s name. It was one of those “close, but no banana” type situations.
“Sh*t, she misspelled it with an ‘M’ three times in her short email. Is ‘Myra’ even a real name?!? “
“I know, right?”
“Ja…well, this is awkward. So…you’re going to correct her, right? She sent the email to you, not me.”
The Boss Lady and I sat there in awkward silence for a minute or two before I piped up:
“Welp, I guess we have no choice but to legally change her name to ‘Myra’, right?”
The Boss Lady concurred.
“The poor kid is going to be so confused come this fall…”
“Hello, this is Jake calling on behalf of the N.C. Troopers Association. Could I speak to Robert?”
Sh*t. The State Troopers calling me, again? I was just a newly-married graduate student at the time, and so somehow had even less money when I was a single graduate student–back when I had made the initial regrettable mistake of feeding The Beast–er, I mean, “donating to their non-profit association.”
The NCTA was, like most charitable organizations, pretty much a homeless person when it came to soliciting donations: no matter how many fat twenty dollar bills you threw at them, they would always come back asking for even more. (Not to mention that they blab to all their homeless associates about how loose you are with your purse strings!)
Sure, donating money to help the families of Troopers fallen in the line of duty is a worthy cause, but was it the worthiest? By that point, there were legion other causes–like credit card and student loan debt–that were easily worthier. Plus, I had gotten fed up with them incessantly calling me.
“This ends NOW.” I thought to myself.
“Hi Jake, I’m sorry Robert won’t be able to come to the phone. You see–*sniff!*–he tragically passed away a few months ago.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry to hear tha–“
Thinking on my feet, I realized that I would have to take swift action before Jake could force me into creating an alter-ego–and then subsequently guilting him into making endless donations.
*Click*….
“Are you effing kidding me?!? You want to move to Finland, but Canada is ‘too cold’?!? You’re out of your gosh dang mind, woman!”
About halfway through this summer, The Boss Lady and I were revisiting an idea we lightly toss around every so often: expatriating to another country and actually getting our daughters a decent education–and hence why cold-ass Finland somehow weasled its way to the top of our hypothetical list.
Attempting to get my life partner to consider a more feasible option, I decided to play the Anne-With-An-E card:
“What about Prince Edward Island? Remember how you forced me to watch the entire 6-hour Anne of Green Gables miniseries before you would agree to marry me? And you’re always talking about taking a vacation to see Anne’s stomping grounds.”
“Ooh, I could do Prince Edward Island…”
“Good, then…”
A few days later, I found myself checking my Zillow app for the 4th time that day–which had become an ingrained ritual for me this summer, as we’d been in the hunt for some acreage in the nearby countryside.
But instead of staying focused on Central North Carolina as per usual, I decided to zoom my search map out, and see what was happening in the real estate world in, say, Northeastern Canada.
I quickly decided that Prince Edward Island wasn’t quite what I wanted, being in the middle of an inland sound and all, so scooted down to check out some of the bright red dots on the southern coast of Nova Scotia.
I only needed to look at two listings before stumbling upon this little coincidence:
“1588 Myra Rd.?!? I gotta share this listing with the Boss Lady!”
You know what the funny thing is about sharing a real estate listing through Zillow? They automatically think you’re super-interested in actually buying that property. You know, never considering the possibility that you might have just found the street address mirthful in a very, very narrow context that only your wife could appreciate.
Wouldn’t you know it though, about a week later this shows up in my email inbox:
“Welp, Honey, it looks like we better book our plane tickets to go see this place…”
“Ooh, you look just like Elsa from Frozen! Is that what you’re wearing to go Trick-or-Treating tonight, Little Girl?”
Last Halloween, I had taken the Younger with me to our usual grocery store to grab some last-minute candy supplies, and she had insisted on wearing her costume, an Elsa princess dress. As we were ringing up our goods in the self-checkout, a guy who was clearly the manager started chatting up my wee one.
The Younger, being 3-1/2 and still a bit shy, just nodded enthusiastically without saying a word.
“Let me guess…is it…wait, one second, I’ll be right back!”
A moment later he returned holding a Barbie-like Elsa doll still in its package.
“Is this who you’re going to be?”
More enthusiastic nodding.
“Awesome! Do you have a doll like this?”
At this question, The Younger seemed more uncertain. And me, being a complete social idiot, almost grasped what was happening in this situation, but panicked nonetheless, deferring to my daughter to handle it.
“Do you have that doll? I think you might, but I’m not sure.”
With a thick layer of uncertainty, she whispered to me, “yes.”
“Thanks, but she says she already has that doll,” I told the manager.
“Uh. Okay. You sure, though?”
Looking again to the Younger, I threw the grenade of social responsibility back in her lap: “Wait, do you have it? Maybe you don’t have it…you have it, right?”
A very tenuous nod was all we got from her.
“Yeah, she has it already. Thanks, though.”
He seemed disappointed as he wished her good luck with her candy-schlepping and walked away.
As I continued to check out, I overhead an older lady, who had been nearby and watched things unfold, quietly ask the manager, “You were going to give that doll to her, weren’t you?”
“Yup…” he said as he shrugged his shoulders in resignation to the fact that his attempt to delight a child had been rebuffed.
From the moment we left the store, I instantly became obsessed with the mistakes that were made…ones that were clearly my mistakes. I had the chance to make my little girl and a middle-aged man both very happy by accepting his very generous gift of a $20 doll, yet I blew it. Ugh, I wasn’t looking forward to the next time I might bump into that guy.
Two weeks of mulling it over later, I had to go on our bi-weekly grocery run. My daughters, along for the ride seemed confused when we passed our turn to the store.
“Uh, Daddy, where are we going?”
“Sorry, girls, but we can never show our faces in that store again…”
“Congratulations! We would like to offer Lyra3Not our daughter’s real name, but this time ’tis I misspelling it for the sake of her privacy. a spot in our half day program at our Children’s House!”
I tell you what, the email from the admissions office at the Elder’s school was like music to our eyes! Sure, it would cost us $100 a month more than sending Lyra/Myra to the Fairy Farm, but it would totally be worth it just to get us out of the pickle with Ms. Heidi.
“So, you finally replied to Ms. Heidi that we wouldn’t be sending our baby to her school, ja?” I had to confirm the obvious with the Boss Lady.
“Ja.”
“And did you address the fact that her name isn’t actually ‘Myra’, ja?”
“Ja…kinda…”
More awkward silence.
“You told her ‘Myra’ died, didn’t you…”4A few days after I cracked this joke, I finally realized why it seems a bit familiar. There was an episode of Seinfeld that culminated in Elaine actually holding a funeral for ‘Suzie’, her alter ego that was accidentally created when a new co-worker called her by the wrong name, and she never had the courage to just correct her.
Content created on: 26 August 2022 (Friday)
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