|
|
|
reconciliation with Hoagie
Wednesday, May 4 2016
As always, there were good parts of today's workday, though it was punctuated by bad ones, which always took place during interactions with Meerkat. His contemptuous attitude at having to interact with idiots (anyone who is not him) is not something he can conceal, even in a chat window. Today he took it a step further, adding condescension to the mix, treating me as though I didn't know some basic Javascript concepts. It's not that I have much of my ego invested in my ability to write disposable web code, but the relentless negativity is corrosive on the soul.
Later this evening I bitched about what a morale suck Meerkat is to Da, stressing that he is going to make it difficult to retain quality hires. Da told me HR is on the case and there will be a meeting about it tomorrow. I'd had a little hope that something like this was in the works, and, though I don't expect much to change, this gives me a little more hope.
This evening Gretchen noticed that someone had left a message on her cellphone from the 540 area code. There are only two people who would call from there: Josh Furr and my mother (Hoagie), and I haven't communicated with the latter in nearly three years. But the message was indeed from Hoagie. It seems that someone purporting to be me had called my Aunt Barbara saying that he was stuck somewhere in Mexico and needed a wire transfer of $10,000 (though, if it could be done quickly, $2000 would suffice for now). It's a classic scam, though evidently my aunt and mother were unaware of it. Still, they had enough common sense to suspect that it might be a scam, thus the call. I tried to return the call, but of course the phone at Hoagie's house was busy, probably because she was talking to Barbara (her twin sister). In the past my mother and father used to tie up the phone line with dialup internet, but I suspect that as my father sickened and died, she gradually lost interest in it for lack of curiosity about the world.
After watching an episode of Better Call Saul (the one where Mike deploys his homemade puncture strip), I called Hoagie again, and this time got through. Despite the three years of estrangement (and her neurotic reasons for being mad at me), she sounded genuinely happy to talk to me, especially after I confirmed that I was not in Mexico and would not be needing $10,000. Hoagie was being her same old self, repeating several things that happened to be in rotation in her mind, particularly the fact that she was now "dating" a gentleman named Jack whom she met at some social function. She didn't seem to know much about Jack other than that he lives in a part of Waynesboro where the streets are named after presidents. This, according to her neighbor Sarah, implies that he must be wealthy. I asked about Jack's politics, religion, what he did/does for a living, and Hoagie had no answers. She knew he'd had a wife named Sue and that she'd worked at the post office (there was a very dull anectdote about that which Hoagie kept in high rotation in her chatter). I asked what Jack's last name was, and Hoagie wouldn't say, but based on the information we already had, Gretchen quickly googled her way to the correct answer, astounding Hoagie as if with magic. We even found the obituary of Jack's former wife. Given that she'd wanted contributions made in her name to Focus on the Family, it seems unlikely that Jack is going to be a good match for my mother, who (thankfully) doesn't seem to have drifted much politically since my father died. The most amusing fact Gretchen managed to uncover about him was that he seems to only be 69 years old, ten years younger than Hoagie.
Another surprising new thing in Hoagie's life is that she now does a lot of long-distance running, a practice she began as a way to fight depression after my father died. She routinely runs the four miles around "the block" containing Pileated Peak, and she's thinking of running a half or full marathon in Keene, New Hampshire, at the marathon named after her father. I found this all rather surprising; last I'd seen my mother, she was plump and had a bad back, but evidently, even at her age, she has what it takes to run ridiculous distances. I myself have never in my life run any further than a single mile at a time.
I had Hoagie on the speakerphone for the whole conversation, though she was so eager to talk and so clearly uninterested in listening, that all I could do was sit there and marvel at the ceaseless prattle, little of it anchored by analysis or reflection. Hoagie is still very much the same person, always emphasizing the positive financial aspects of everything, even serious tragedies. When, for example, her horse Lightning got stuck in a fence and died, she said something about how sad the other horses were but then went on at length about how nice her neighbor was to bury the horse, since it would've cost $300 otherwise. There were also lots of little tales about food being had for free, even at places such as the Subaru dealership where she'd bought a Forester.
It was a bit painful to endure sober, so I motioned for Gretchen to fetch me a beer. She got me a Little Sumpin' Sumpin' from a sixpack Michæl had brought over today, and got herself an incredibly sour beer from a sixpack Eva and Sandor had bought her.
At some point Hoagie must've realized she was doing all the talking, and she perfunctorily asked what I've been up to, so, before the conversational waters of the Red Sea collapsed onto me, I quickly rattled off the bullet points: Gretchen had gone to Mexico for language school (no, Hoagie, that had nothing to do with today's scam attempt), our dog Eleanor is dying of lymphoma, we got a new dog named Neville, I got a new job working as a remote web developer for an animal rights organization, Gretchen is teaching food ethics in public schools among other things, and we even have a rental property in Kingston bringing in $1400/month.
When we circled back again to the attempted scam that had brought about this reconciliation, I pointedly told my mother that I wouldn't have thought to call her had I really gotten in trouble in Mexico. I would've first called Gretchen, or her parents. Gretchen thought it was good that I got that dig in, though I don't know that it registered.
Though it wasn't the most pleasant phonecall to endure, it was nevertheless good to clear the air and be back on speaking terms with the batty old woman who spawned me.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?160504 feedback
previous | next |
