I Made a Fire Fighter Feel Bad

This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.

As long as I can remember I have appeared and sounded younger than I am. This was exacerbated in some part because I have tall parents and had a tall best friend in high school. Standing next to them had a way of making me look even younger than I already did. I always joked that I’d be carded until I turned 40 and then my skin would implode and people would be trying to help me cross the street. I wasn’t far off the mark. I was 41 before a well-meaning young man tried to steady my arm at a high curb. Look! I earned that limp from running . . . away from a spider.

Once in high school my parents took my best friend and me to an R-rated movie (Lethal Weapon 3, if you’re curious) and the ticket taker wanted to know if the “younger one” was their daughter (turns out you are not supposed to take other people’s kids to R-rated movies, but it was the 90s and no one really cared). My mother said, “No, but the shorter one is.” This evidently was too much for the ticket takers brain to handle. My 5’4” frame and mass of pig tails standing next to three 6-footers would not compute. “Well, you can’t take the little one into an R-rated movie without her parent’s permission.” Sighing, I flipped my ID out on the counter and pointed at the birth date. “I’m 17, I can buy my own bloody ticket.” As we walked away, I overheard her whisper to another theater worker, “I thought she was 12!” We laughed all the way in, because my best friend had just snuck into an R-rated movie at the age of 16. 

For a long time, I politely corrected people when they mis-estimated my age, but after a while, I decided to roll with it. I got under-12 discounts at restaurants and theaters all the way until college. One time, my parents and I walked into a pizza buffet. The place was empty. As we wove through the zig zagging brass delineators to the counter, my parents were brutally roasting the parking job I had done on the way in. I strolled up to the register, flopped my big jangly chain full of keys down on the counter and said, “Three for the buffet.” The clerk pushed a few buttons and said, “Two adults, one child, that will be $19 dollars.” I cocked my eyebrow at the folks and shrugged. As we leaned over the spit guards and pushed our trays down the counters piling on food, I explained to my parents that I knew that girl. She’d been two years behind me in middle school. So, it’s not just adults who misjudged my age.

I work in a college town. Well into my 30’s people would see my university employee ID and ask “What’s your major?” I would respond, “Being an adult with a job.”

I’m a crusty middle aged woman now, and people are more likely to say, “You look tired” – code for “old” – that they are to say, “You look so much younger than your age!” There is one area in which my age is still vastly under estimated and that’s on the phone. I have the voice of a 9 year old child (and the hand size as well, but that just makes it hard to hold large fistfuls hamsters). It’s even worse on recordings [1]. 

My parents liked using me to perform small chores from an early age. “Hey kid, let the dog out!” They would shout down the hallway at me when I was in my room reading a book. I would stomp down the hallway into the living room and find one of them sitting in a chair within literally arms reach of the sliding door. 

“Dude, you could have just reach out and open the door!”

“Yeah, but I’d have to turn around and my arm would be at a weird angle.”

One of my favorites was, “Hey, come out here and tell me how to navigate this video game maze.” 

“But that takes like an hour and I bought you the glossy strategy guide. It’s right there in front of you.”

“Yeah, but I want you to sit here on the carpet at my feet and tell me how to do it instead.”

From an early age they insisted I be telephone literate. If a pizza needed to be ordered I would be the one making a call. If we wanted to know what time the movies were playing, I would make the call [2]. Someone needed to schedule a chimney sweep, seems like a good job for the kid. And when calls came in, I got to act as switchboard.

“Is your mommy home?” was a pretty standard phone greeting, but I was cagey. I knew that for the most part anyone who actually knew my mom knew me and would say “Hi” and ask for my mom by name.

“Is your mommy home?”

“Maybe, whose asking? Is this the publishers clearinghouse, because she has empowered me to accept the giant check on her behalf?” 

“Is your mommy home?”

“I think the real question is, is YOUR mommy home, cause I have a great deal on a super sonic vacuum that I really think she’d be interested in.”

“Is your mommy home? I’m calling about the car for sale.”

“Sure, the asking price is firm. It has a new starter, all the points and plugs have been replaced, and I changed the headlight fluid myself.”

Eventually, I left home and went off to college. I lived in a series of increasingly shady apartments [3].

“Is your mommy home.”

“Dude, I have no idea. My mom lives 200 miles away and has an active sex life. She could be at one the clubs right now for all I know [4].”

One night, I was feeling particularly cranky and wondering why I even bothered with a phone at all when I had a stroke of genius.

The phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello.”

“Hello, is your mom home?”

In my best shaking, gulping voice I stuttered, “M-M-M My mom’s dead.” And now, with a full body wracking sob, “My parents b-burned to death in a car crash s-six months agooooo.” In my head I was practicing my award speech. I’d like to thank the Academy for this honor and my mom, who definitely did not die in car crash. Also, the fellow from Izzy’s Pizza who never complains about delivering to my scary basement apartment. This is for you lovely pizza guy!

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve seen so many folks in the same situation. I’m sorry to bother you during your grief. I’m a firefighter calling on behalf of the Shriners to raise money for the burn unit at our local hospital. But it sounds like you could use a sympathetic ear to talk to. I’m happy to listen.”

Well, shit.

I was officially the worst human on earth. Here this nice man who saves lives . . . from fire. . . is taking his personal time to raise money to help injured children and their families and I’ve dumped a load of epic level horseshite on him. Really, it couldn’t have been one of those vacation scammers? Or even some idealistic young kid trying to register people to vote. No, I had to go full asshole on an American hero. F@#$. ME.

“Oh man. I’ll be straight with you buddy. My parents didn’t die. I just have this child voice and I get tired of being asked if my mom is home. Um, do you take checks? I’m a college student, but I can give like $10-$15 bucks for actual burned kids.”

Now I’d like to tell you that the above is what I actually said. But what I really did was take the information for a grief support group and wish him a nice night and good luck with the fundraising [5].

I no longer claim my parents are dead on the phone, but I did once give a market researcher some very confusing answers to a survey about my frozen food consumption habits. Look, if the road kill was frozen after I scraped it off the highway, then it is by definition a “frozen food” I can’t help it if there is no category for possum in their database! [6]

Thank goodness everyone texts now. I wasn’t looking forward to being asked if my “mommy” is at home when I go through menopause.

~~~

[1] Yes, I’m quite aware that everyone’s voice sounds deeper in their own skull due to reverberation. Most people are surprised how high pitched they sound to the rest of the world. I know with excruciating detail just how child-like my voice is because I’ve spent over 50 hours transcribing interviews I conducted for my dissertation.

[2] Ok kiddies! Pre-internet, when you wanted to know the movie time you could either look in the newspaper (but we didn’t get the paper), or you could call the movie theater and listen to a ten minute long answering machine recording with all the movie times. It was super fun when the dog started barking right when they listed the movie times you were interested in after the disclaimers and advertisements you’d sat through. You’d have to call back and listen to it all over again. On Friday afternoons the line would be busy and you’d have to call and call and call. 

[3] One was a literal crack house! The new owners had evicted all but one of the drug dealers. I got lots of late night knocking on my door for folks really in need of a hook up. Let me tell you, strung out junkies are soooo easy to scare. I had quite a bit of fun making actual “wooo-wooo” noises like ghost through my door. It helped that there was a heating pipe that ran through my room that I could bang on with a metal spoon to add to the ambiance.

[4] I feel compelled to say that my mom is not in fact a swinger, but I think she’ll enjoy the joke anyway.

[5] You’re saying to yourself, she made that up. There’s no way she fake sobbed on the phone to a complete stranger. But oh, yes, yes I did.

[6] But you didn't actually do THAT!? Did I tell the guy on the phone that I had a possum in my freezer that I had every intention of eating? Yes. Did I really have a possum in my freezer. No, no I did not. [7]

[7] Side note I actually do always answer research surveys and often market research. Some of it’s professional courtesy as a fellow researcher. Some of it’s pure impulsive wackiness. I don’t even have to give bizzarre answers to mess with the data for many surveys. I’m such an outlier for most research as to cause all sorts of weirdness.

*This post was originally a part of the now defunct Somnaplegic blog.