(Please consider expressing whatever pleasure and enjoyment you gain from reading by clicking on the "Donate" button above and contributing a dollar, 50 cents, a little more or a little less to my PayPal account. If you find value in the work, I hope you'll consider a financial donation that will help me continue to present my work to you. -- Ted Sillanpaa)
So, I was driving back from the store with my youngest son and got a telephone call from work.
"Ted? This is Andy. Hi!"
Yeah? What? I called in sick. Flu or something that, alas, doesn't take away the need to do dad stuff. (Dads can't call in sick.)
"Yeah...Marty just got a call ... um...from the Times-Standard up in Eureka...and..."
What? Gee whiz? I know the guys I worked with were thoughtful, but I didn't need to hear about every communication between them and folks at my old workplace.
"...and, um, the sports editor up there said you were in a car accident..."
Say what?
"I ... huh? No! I'm driving home right now. That's weird."
Weird didn't accurately describe how it felt to hear a rumor that I'd been in a car wreck, perhaps 350 miles away in my old hometown. Weird might've applied if I had any personal relationship with the sports writers in Eureka. I don't really know them at all.
"...actually...um..."
Andy tends to meander through a conversation, but he was really struggling. He'd pause when he's saying something that he's uncomfortable saying. Nice guys are like that. They know they're going to say something potentially upsetting so ... they ... hesitate. (Thus, I tend to blurt things out and think later.)
"...actually, they said you'd passed away."
The Times-Standard guy called the Napa Valley Register guy to tell them that I'd died.
OK.
"He called to see if I'D DIED!?!?!?! That's insane. I'm alive, unless something happened I don't know about. My son's in the back seat of the car and he's in trouble if I'm dead..."
I laughed it off because my parents' deaths skewed my view of death. I'm a little afraid of dying, like lots of people. I know it makes people who are left behind really sad, so ... sure ... I'd say the thought of my own death is unpleasant. I have, however, come to grips with the fact I'm going to die and that the world will go on...my family and friends will get over my death and, in the majority of cases, continue to prosper.
Hearing word of my own demise didn't send a chill down my spine or anything. Well, maybe a little chill down close to my spine ends in my lower back.
The story of my death apparently started in Fairfield, another former workplace. However, no one there cares enough about me one way or the other there to start a rumor about my death. Word is that somebody else with a connection to Eureka called the Times-Standard with some news. When asked what he was calling for, he remembered that I'd worked up there a long time and joked that, "Ted Sillanpaa died in a car crash."
I have a morbid sense of humor, but it's impossible to imagine that ever being funny.
Hearing I'd died did not make me laugh. It all made me wonder how word of my passing would actually travel, once I actually passed.
In just a few minutes, I'd learned that someone I don't know well spread word that I'd died. Then, someone I really don't know at all telephoned a work friend to tell him I'd been in a car wreck and died.
That's not the weird part.
The work friend in Napa knew I was at home sick and that the possibility that I'd died in a crash 300 miles away was ...
The story started to make people seem ... stupid.
I'd worked the night before and called in sick that day. How could my work friend accept as fact that I'd died in a wreck hundreds of miles from the office? Then, let's say it was possible that I'd died, what would possess another co-worker to call me to allow me to confirm or deny my demise?
If my co-worker had telephoned 15 minutes earlier, I'd have been in bed and not answering the phone. He would have, I can assume, guessed I was dead. Right? Or, would he have left a phone message.
"Ted ... just calling because we heard you died in a car crash. Um ... if you ... I mean ... can you ... will you ... er ... give me a call if you're alive?"
They'd probably have gone that route since they'd have wanted to cover my next shift as quickly as possible.
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