I got an e-mail from a stranger the other day. I did not recognize the name of the sender, but still, I opened it. I was one of ten recipients, and we were all advised to mobilize for the “ham dinner.”
This is the thing about the age in which we live: if you get a letter at your home that is addressed to someone other than you, you know that you are not supposed to open it. You know that you have received it in error, and you will place it back in your mailbox, marked “addressee unknown,” or something similar. You will not open it. (And if you did, you will not admit to it, for you will have committed a crime, right?) But you commit no crime when you do as I did: I opened an e-mail with the reference line of “Ham Dinner.”
“Hi all,
“Please remember that the HAM DINNER is tomorrow. If you plan on helping we will see you there around three.”
I will not name them here, but five people were called out to perform, or confirm the performance of, specific functions related to the HAM DINNER. One person was responsible for “the pick up of the hams, rolls, cookies, cake and ice.” Another was to bring yard signs, order forms and samples. There was a query to another about “the black board sign,” acknowledgement by the sender of responsibility for “coleslaw and the drink mix and poster board,” and a notation that someone, whose e-mail was unknown at the time, had “flags and the 50/50 can.” One dear person was away in Florida, and everyone was counseled to contact four other people named in the e-mail. And to “Sell Sell Sell.”
I used to work with a writer who was collecting store receipts he found. He liked to speculate on what kind of life needed unlikely combinations such as “1 Qt Milk, 1 Can Tomatoes, 1 Qt 10W 40.” For a little while, that e-mail from a stranger provided me with an opportunity to build an imagined life, which I was prepared to do until someone in the e-mail string “replied to all.”
This person was in charge of “the black board sign;” he attached a picture of the sign, with the exclamation, “Sign’s up!” The sign is an actual blackboard with chalk inscriptions. But as I mused in amusement over my (seemingly) mistaken inclusion in an event, I noticed something about the name of the original sender: I knew her.
Or, had met her once. She was one of the people my sister and I had spoken with at the funeral home my mother had chosen to handle her interment. (My mother scripted her services and interment, and left the document for her children in her “dead box.”) I wrote my mother’s obituary and had to send some revisions to the person responsible for getting it into the newspaper, the sender of my e-mail. Once I knew that the e-mail was not from a stranger, I throttled back the fantastical possibilities, but I started to worry another bone: my mother died in June 2010. Why did this person still have my e-mail address?
I decided that I do not care. The e-mail was legitimately sent out to nine people who know each other as well as the sender. But the e-mail also added caprice to its solemn duty and split off a piece to send to me, to stimulate my imagination.
With imagination, an e-mail from a stranger can be like a pebble dropped into a pond, with the resultant ripple lifting a floating leaf to expose a beetle for the swooping bird.