Hometown Help

The best call I ever had was from a lady who was around ninety. I gave her my greeting, including my name, which is required when we start a call.

Lady: “Where are you overseas? And what’s your real name?”

Me: “As I said, my name is [My Name], and we’re in [Town].”

Lady: “That’s impossible! I used to live in [Town], and I never heard of your company when I lived there!”

She started doing Twenty Questions about the town, all softballs anyone there would know. I aced them all and even told her where I parked when I took my folks to see the area’s big July Fourth fireworks. There was a long pause, and then:

Lady: “Describe the house across the street.”

I did, and she asked about the rose bushes out front. Guess whose house it was from twenty or twenty-five years before? She was so happy to hear about the rose bushes; they were hard to miss.

My call time went out the window. As I helped her with the original problem, we talked about all the changes to the town since she’d left. It was the best hour I ever spent on a snowy December twenty-third.