Living Happily Ever After
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Blog Articles

If The Phone Doesn’t Ring

Date: January 18, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“If The Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me.” (song title by Jimmy Buffet)

Telephones.

Let’s just say I’m not addicted to them. Never have been. Probably never will be. But last night I realized what an impact the phone has had on the love lives of the women in my family, so I have to share.

The Henrie-Jorgensen-Christensen women have a history with…the phone.

My Nana, Vonda Henrie, (born in 1903) worked as a telephone operator when she was a teenager. She was the old-fashioned kind of telephone operator, the kind featured in black and white movies or tv shows, the woman wearing a headset that you called and asked to be connected to a certain phone number—and she’d connect your line to another one by hand.

One important rule for operators was the one about never listening in on the conversations of other people. I think my Nana was obedient to that rule, too, until the night a boy she had been dating called during her shift and asked to be connected to another girl!

Can anyone blame her for breaking the rule that night? Of course she listened in! And even at age 90, as she recalled it, she shook her head in disgust at the “lovey-dovey” things she overheard her boyfriend say to the other girl.  I asked, “Oh, Nana! What did you do?” She gave me a satisfied smirk, a wink, and a smile as she said, “Oh, nothing much…except disconnected them when I’d had enough of his nonsense!”

“There is something about saying ‘Ok’ and hanging up the receiver with a bang that kids a man into feeling that he has just pulled off a big deal, even if he has only called the telephone company to find out the correct time.” (Robert Benchley)

And then Nana had a son.

My dad.

“No, sir. The Americans have need of the telephone — but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” (England’s chief engineer of the post office, when asked whether the new ‘Yankee invention,’ the telephone, would be of any practical value)

A Serenade

Date: August 29, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.” (Robert Benchley)

Or serenades the girl. A little background:

My parents met and fell in love when they were 15 years old, although they fell in and out of love with several other people between that time and the day they married, as 25 year olds, on December 21, 1962. My mom raised my sisters and I on stories of her childhood like going to a dance with my dad and for their first date, my dad and another boy fist-fighting afterward over who got to take my mom home, and my mom getting so disgusted by the whole thing that she left and walked herself home while the boys fought!

My mom starring in theatrical productions like “Brigadoon,” “Oklahoma,” and others and having all kinds of adventures while performing–kissing cute boys who were the male leads, falling off the stage in the middle of a performance with her skirt and slips falling over her head showing her panties to the entire audience–and having to get back up on stage and finish the performance. (Maybe that’s why I just can’t quit and give up despite crime, divorce, betrayal, public humiliation, dating, the singles scene the second time around, and everything else that accompanies an unexpected life.)

And about the night my dad’s friend drove up and down the street in front of her house in his convertible while my dad serenaded her with his saxophone. THAT thrilled me! (Of course, it probably would have been more thrilling for my mom if she hadn’t had another date sitting in her living room during the serenade!) But I always loved that story. However, that took place in the 1950s, I grew up in the 80s, and things like that didn’t happen in “Pretty In Pink,” “Sixteen Candles,” and “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

Eventually I married a man who was not musically inclined and I forgot about serenades. I didn’t remember how much I’d admired my dad’s musical performance to the girl he loved and I forgot that I had ever dreamed teenage girl dreams of experiencing that myself, especially after enduring the events of 2009 and ending up unexpectedly single. (I had a lot of other things on my mind!)

So the next week when Bachelor #5 picked me up (only this time, HE was sick and on antibiotics!) I cringed when he announced he was taking me to his house to play the piano and sing for me. I panicked. I’ve always considered myself fairly optimistic, but I wasn’t thinking positive thoughts about this unexpected performance! I just knew it was going to be mediocre at best, that the whole thing was going to be corny, and that I was going to have to come up with something complimentary to say afterward.

But I didn’t let on to any of that. I sat where he directed me to and braced myself for his performance. I couldn’t look at him. I could only look at the floor and prepare to endure. And then he started to play. He began to sing.

It’s a good thing I’d braced myself for his performance because I probably would have fallen off the couch if I hadn’t! He was unexpectedly good; a performer and entertainer. And although I hadn’t heard the song before and wasn’t sure if it was a song he sang to all women he dated, I even liked his song choice. When it ended, I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned. Speechless.

He stood up to take me home and I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know what to say. I told him how good he was, how much I had enjoyed it and I thanked him for sharing his talent with me. Compared to how I’d imagined the whole experience would be, I felt like a gushing idiot. So then I tried to lighten things up by joking that I didn’t believe I’d ever been sung to by a man before.

He didn’t bat an eye as he replied, “I’m glad you liked it. But just so you know, that’s not all I would have done if I weren’t on antibiotics!”

And he took me home.

“When you’re safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.” (Thornton Wilder)