Letter From An Irate Customer

Dear Mr. CEO,

I am a person with limited closet space and therefore forced to store “out of season” clothes in bulky bins in my basement.

Last Spring, your clever advertisers wooed me into buying your Spacebags, promising me easy, space-saving storage.  As instructed, I filled them with my fall and winter clothes, as well as two blankets, and vacuumed all of the air from the bags until they were flat pallets. To my pleasant surprise, they fit easily under my bed and along the top of my closet. I bid a happy farewell to my old-fashioned bins.

Yesterday, upon releasing the air from said bags, I pulled out my clothes and blankets. At first glance, all seemed perfectly well. But upon wear, I found your so-called “Space bags” shrunk my clothes – every last article – by several inches.

I am so distressed, I cannot bring myself to measure the blankets.

So, I am filing a formal complaint to your company and recommend that you include a warning on your packaging that says something like this:

WARNING: CONTENTS IN BAGS MAY SHRINK OVER TIME. ESPECIALLY AFTER THOROUGHLY ENJOYED SUMMER MONTHS.

As for me, I’ll return to my bulky, plastic bins held in my dank basement, thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Wenzler

PS: Please disregard this mark here –>  ⊗    I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps an ink stain. It is most definitely NOT a Mallomar smudge.

The Power of Music

I listen to the 70’s satellite  radio station in the car, which is sometimes a mistake.

The other day, on the way to pick up my son from his high school band practice, Leo Sayer started singing When I Need You and immediately I was reminded of my youth (not unlike the wonderful Mallomar I’ve talked about).

I drove down Main Street, but I was seeing my own High School in my vision: my fifteen-year-old self, carrying my books and meeting my three besties in the parking lot — the same three people who still grace my life today, and who keep me tethered to everything I know and loved.

Sitting in my car, waiting for my son, Sayer was followed by Michael Murphey’s Wildfire. I thought of my mom, and what she must have felt like watching me and my brother grow up: start high school, plow through puberty, then graduate and head to college, while we forged through life looking only ahead, free of sentiment and nostalgia.

God, it’s so easy being a kid. Now it’s all I can do, when given the time and the right mood music, to hold myself together as my own kids go through the very stages of life I did without thought.

I think of my mortality as I get older and wonder how the hell I got here and how desperately I want to go back and do it again, the same way, only this time with the appreciation of one who knows just how precious it all is… Just yesterday I was on the bus, making weekend plans with the girls, complaining about homework, and whispering about my latest crush.

Five minutes later, I was a bride with a baby who took my breath away, who I held for hours while watching him breathe, sleep, laugh and learn, in awe, wondering what kind of person he would be. I even asked him, days old, as we both stared at each other with the dawn outside. I remember how he looked at me, inquisitively — this beautiful babe — probably wondering What is this woman saying, and Why doesn’t she just feed me?

Now, he’s taller than me and he has a brother who’s not far behind. They’re more than I could have hoped for.

High School. Is it true these are the fastest years? Could they possibly pass any faster than his first fifteen? Than my last twenty-five?

Once in a while, I need to step off the hamster wheel and just take it all in. My kid is in high school. I’M THE PARENT OF A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT.

For the love of God, can someone please tell me, how do I slow down the clock of time?

I really have to start listening to AM radio. News. Strictly news.

This music is killing me.

Happy Birthday!

Good Morning,

As we embark on a new season, and a very special birthday, I would like to devote a few words to something that brings me enormous pleasure.

The Mallomar. 

Please don’t think me shallow. I am aware I speak of a cookie. I know you feel the same way.

Don’t worry, it’s our secret. Pinky swear.

This delectable treat is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. That’s HUGE!  Did you know the first box was sold in New Jersey? According to Wikipedia, 70% of mallomars are sold in Metropolitan New York.

You’re welcome, Nabisco.

Last night, as I bit into my first mallomar of the season, that perfect graham cracker circle, covered with a puff of fluffy marshmallow, and enrobed in a dark chocolate shell, I closed my eyes, and I was nine years old again; in a sweater vest, corduroy gauchos, and knee socks, sitting on the red, quilted couch in my wall-paneled den, earth shoes on my feet, hanging over the red and black speckled, shag carpet, while I watched Marcia Brady get hit on the nose by a football.

My mom was in the kitchen preparing dinner, (tuna noodle casserole), singing Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life,” while Dad was on the LIRR, on his way home from work.

The image was so clear in my mind; I was that girl again, if just for a moment.

To me, this cookie, which is available from September through April (a brilliant marketing plan by Nabisco), represents happiness, and freedom from worry. It is my childhood. It is hope, and optimism, and sweetness, wrapped up in a beautiful, yellow package.

So, Happy 100th Birthday, Mallomar! I may not be the first to wish you a happy birthday (and if I am, then that’s a little weird), but I am the most sincere.

Every bite brings me home.

Is there anything better than that, I ask you?

Have a wonderful, chocolate-filled day.