So there I was, minding my own business on Facebook…wait - no person, human or otherwise, can ever utter such a thing, since the whole reason you are on Facebook is to get into everybody’s else’s business. Anyway, an old college volleyball teammate sends me a message saying she heard our coach had died and was it true and how sad and blah blah blah, like it happened weeks or months ago.
Ack! I can’t believe it. It’s freaking me out, but I’m also skeptical of this news.
My first instinct is to call his house to confirm this, but I can’t just call his house, are you kidding me? Instead, I totally freak out and my adrenaline flies around my body, because I still meet with this guy, my old coach, every so often for lunch and yeah, it has been a while since we talked and yeah, he was diagnosed with ALS several years ago but so far, he’s shown no sign of it and it’s not one of those things that goes from zero to sixty and kills you overnight so WTF?
I go to his Facebook page, even though he hardly ever does anything on there. I see the last thing that happened was that he became friends with his wife. Oh crap, why did he only just recently become friends with his wife? Could it be that he died and his wife got on his account and friended each other so that she could have access and handle any post mortem online issues? And how would you do that anyway? Because everybody thinks you’re the dead guy talking.
The suspense was already starting to kill me (so to speak). I had to hurry and find out the truth because I was beginning to mourn his loss. What if he wasn’t dead? If I already start the mourning process, is that bad for his mojo?
I know! I’ll call his cell phone and see if I can glean any clues from that. He’ll either answer it, or it will be disconnected, maybe. But then if it’s disconnected, maybe he got a new number because his phone got stolen and then I’d be no closer to finding out what happened. Well, I HAD to do something.
I call and get HIS voice on his voice mail. And he sounds just fine on his outgoing message, which is stupid because if you die unexpectedly, of course you’re going to sound fine on your outgoing voice mail message. Unless you’re psychic of course. Oh great, now what? What do I say to a dead guy’s voice mail? “Uhhh, hi, Jack. Long time no talk. Uhhh, so give me a call….if you’re still around.” Am I just leaving a message to dead air (so to speak)? I mean will no one get that message so I’ll be left hanging (so to speak) wondering why no one is returning my call? Well, THAT would be just awkward and embarrassing and about fourteen different kinds of wrong. So I hang up without saying anything.
I Google him to see if there are any obituaries about him and I can’t find a dang thing. Surely if he died, it would have shown up in the paper and therefore the internet, right? RIGHT?
Well, there’s nothing left to do now, but ….call…his…home number. Ugh. Oh, God. What if his wife answers the phone? Do I just play dumb and ask for him? Let her drop the bomb? Is that mean to do? Or is it meaner to say, “Excuse me, but is your husband still alive?” After much rumination, I decide I’ll just feign ignorance and ask for Jack and let us both go through the pain of her breaking the news to me. It seems horrible, because then I’ll have to act surprised, like I didn’t hear about it on Facebook, but I don’t know how else to do this.
I call his home number and on the second ring, Jack, of all people, answers the phone with a healthy hearty “Hello”.
“Hi Jack”, I let out my breath after holding it while it rang. It’s Margaret.”
“Meg! How are you?”
I’m sweating is how I am. My hands were shaking a moment ago is how I am.
“Um, well really good now. Do you realize that rumors about your death have been greatly exaggerated?”
With most people, I wouldn’t have said anything, but this guy is great, let’s things roll off his back, and I wanted to be honest. I told him what had happened, he responded with humor, and I asked him if we could do lunch. Like, soon.
I logged back into Facebook and told the original rumor monger to cease and desist immediately with the spreading of untruths, that Jack was very much alive, and she said that she had heard it from someone who had heard it from someone, which made it sound like an ugly virus that no one had bothered to stop and take a second to inoculate.
So let this be a lesson to you all. If something sounds too good to be tr- oops, wrong lesson. Don’t listen to idle gossip. Well, actually, how would you know something like that is just gossip? I mean, people don’t usually run around accusing people of being dead all the time, do they? I have no idea what lesson you can take away from this, except maybe that if you’re going to have a Facebook account, you might every once in a while in your Facebook status tell everyone: “I’m not dead yet”.
NGIP 2011 Calendar Now on Sale!
NGIP readers contributed each month’s pictures to the 2011 Calendar and now it’s on sale at Zazzle.
