You see, as a class parent for my son’s kindergarten class, I have to send emails to the other parents. To streamline the process, I created a group called “Mrs. Raven’s Class.” When I type in the address "Mrs. Raven's Class" a pull down menu appears that gets whittled down with each letter I type.
First it’s all the M’s, then Mr’s, then Mrs’s until there are only two selections: “Mrs. Raven’s Class” and “MrsRiccardi.”
MrsRiccardi@ican’ttellyouthatorimightgetsued.com is the email address of someone from my past. We met doing a show years ago. We were both writers and performers. We started kicking around some ideas while waiting to go onstage and subsequently decided to write a spec script together.
The script was humming along pretty well via emails back and forth. Then she suggested having a writing session at her apartment.
I entered her front door, which was ajar, and had to slide sideways through the hall because of the floor-to-ceiling stacks of New York magazines lining her entryway. We're talking thousands.
A somber kind of funeral dirge played as I inched my way to her kitchen. There were two big litter boxes on the floor which took up almost half of the tiny linoleum floor. The rest was covered by the litter that had spilled out. The kitchen table was stacked with cardboard boxes, dirty dishes and more magazines.
On the counter, two cats were walking on a pizza that lay with its box open. Then the gray one sat down in the middle of the pizza. MrsRiccardi offered me a slice (I declined) and told me how she couldn't stop playing the Naval Hymn from the end of the movie "The Perfect Storm," and that she had played it all weekend long, over and over again.
I sat down on a short stack of magazines as it was the only place to sit, and took out my notebook.
“You must be hungry. I’ll make you a peanut butter sandwich,” she said.
In spite of my assurances that I was not at all hungry, she handed me a plate with a peanut butter sandwich, on top of which was a layer of cat hair so thick and fluffy I could've wrapped it around my neck to block the November chill.
As I sat there wondering how all that cat hair got on top of the top piece of bread, I conveniently had an asthma attack and excused myself from her apartment and her life.
I deleted her from my address book. I haven’t corresponded with her in years. I’ve had three computers since then. Why is she still with me, oh God of Technology? Is it my fate that she go on rattling her crazy chains inside every computer I own, The Ghost of Emails Future?
Eileen Kelly was a semi-finalist in Nick at Nite’s “Search for the Funniest Mom in America,” and made a name for herself with " My Pony's in the Garage," which premiered at the NY Fringe Festival. She is currently writing a memoir based on her solo show and has written several treatments and spec scripts for television. She likes Springsteen, cheap beer and good Italian bread. Did we mention she’s from Jersey?
