There Is No You

I have a lovely post on the way about our completely wonderful weekend adventure in Michigan, but in the meantime I have to share with you the latest dose of CRAZY.

The last few weeks of vacation have allowed me a little time to look for alternate day care for Colin because of some issues that we were having with Cheap and Close. I haven't written about them here because I didn't know what I was going to do and, more importantly, hadn't addressed the issues with Cheap and Close yet. But I sent out some inquiries, have had a few interviews, and have been trying to decide what to do.

Today I was to have an interview this afternoon. The lady was even cheaper and not too much farther away. Judging by her Craigslist ad and her emails, I think she is Hispanic. Our email conversation was relatively normal. She writes in ALL CAPS, which gets old pretty quickly, and writes back immediately, even during the day when she supposedly is watching four children, but she seemed nice enough.

We exchanged phone numbers and she sent me her address for our meeting today.

Then I got the following email from her this morning.

I LOOKED YOU UP AND THERE IS NO YOU. I NOTIFIED THE POLICE SO WATCH OUT!

I wondered if one of the kids was a mischievous bugger. I wondered if perhaps she meant the message for someone else. I wondered if I had fallen asleep and was dreaming. Because in what messed up world does this email fall into your inbox after five days of chatting cordially?

In my messed up world, apparently. In my messed up world where THERE IS NO ME.

So I replied.

Excuse me?

If your email was some kind of mistake, let me know and we might reschedule our meeting.

What do you mean you "looked me up"? Where did you look? And what exactly did you notify the police of? What do you suggest that I "watch out" for?

I don't know what you mean by this, but I am very real, as is my frustration at this email from you.

I assume that this means our 1pm appointment for you to meet my very real 11 month old son is now canceled and that we will not be working together. I was very looking forward to meeting you and seeing the daycare. It seems, however, that you are not interested in seeing me, my son, or our business. If this is the kind of business that you run and person that you are, I am glad to avoid you.

I probably should have taken a walk around the block or something to calm down before I wrote and sent that email, but let me tell you that email just ate my lunch.

Five minutes later, she writes back that whoops! She called the number I had given her and the person who answered said that there was no one there by my name. I looked back and saw that I had typed a '2' where there should have been a '3', thereby mistakenly giving her an incorrect number. Totally my fault. She wrote that she "freaked out when she called and they said she had the wrong number". So she CALLED THE POLICE. I take no responsibility for that. That little doozie was all her.

In my answer, I apologized for the error, gave her my correct number for her to verify my existence, and asked that she call and tell the police to stand down. Then I told her that she was completely nuts and that if she was going to lose it like that every time she dialed a wrong number then I was certainly not going to leave her in charge of keeping my son alive every day.

Probably should have let that one sit a few minutes too before responding.

Does this stuff happen to other people? Tell me the craziest misunderstanding you've been involved in. I need a support group after learning that THERE IS NO ME and you, Dear Readers, have never failed me.