Someone Sends You Food in the Mail. You Don’t Know Who it’s From. To Eat or Not to Eat?
Last Friday night I was in New York with three friends, getting punched in the stomach for 3 hours straight (a.k.a. attending the excellent production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? currently playing at the Booth Theater).
Right before the play started, I got a text from my husband with a photo of a box of Goo Goo Clusters in UPS packaging. His message said, “Do you know who sent this?” Given the fact that I was about to watch a play about an abusive marriage, I snottily texted back: ”Was there a note?” Of course, because my husband has an IQ higher than 7, he had already checked for a note and found none.
My husband—who almost has a hard time eating things I buy at the store for fear that I have secretly poisoned him—definitely was not going to touch the Clusters. And so during intermission I found another text from him: ”Where did you put all the candy?”
Because I am in a mostly healthy, un-Virginia Woolfish marriage, I was consumed by guilt. You see, that very morning I had donated all of our leftover Halloween candy to the troops through my son’s school—and there was a lot, as Halloween was “cancelled” by my town (see: Hurricane Sandy). But I didn’t tell my husband that I was giving away the candy. So now he had no Halloween candy, and extremely suspicious Goo Goo Clusters.
And so my husband, three sons, and I stared forlornly at the Goo Goo Clusters for the following 18 hours, until the mail arrived on Saturday. In the mail was a note from our dear friend Judith, who lives in Iowa and thought that what we probably needed most, given our superstorm experience, was a box of wonderful candy from Nashville. She didn’t even know I had given away the Halloween candy. As always, Judith was exactly right.
So much to be thankful for: that my marriage is better than George and Martha’s. That I have a roof over my head after the hurricane. That my elementary school makes it so easy to help others. And that I have a dear friend in Iowa who knows there’s nothing better than the just-right mystery food gift, as long as it doesn’t remain a mystery forever.
This never happens to me, but I’ve read too many Agatha Christie novels to ever eat food that came through the mail.
[...] eat or not to eat, that is the [...]
Really, you are that paranoid? Why would you not eat the candy?
Wow! ‘ve never received unidentified sweet treats in the mail. I can understand your feeling suspicious, but I’m glad that you got to dive into the box in the end. Happy ending.
I am in Australia and just discovered your magazine this afternoon in one of my town’s larger newsagencies. I love it!
As a writer who is focusing more and more on happiness theories and what I call ‘living more beautifully’, I especially loved your little editorial in this issue about audacious generosity. Thank you for the reminder.
(And I’m extra excited to see the Blogs We Like panel just there on the right.)
I’m surprised that there was no return name and address on the package.
After advice from my cousin, I visit this blog and I should say I immediately
became your supporter!