If I can manage to disengage from my ego it is actually funny. Not the funny you feel when a baby laughs over a game of peek-a-boo. Rather the slap stick humor of a sit com in the sixties when someone slips on a banana peel and lands in a mud puddle. 

 

Last week, back when our most pressing concerns were the pandemic, the flailing economy, and applying for a mail in ballot, I was cleaning my sewing room after a flurry of projects. I came across a handful of attachments and a manual for one of my featherweights, and decided it really was time to stop being so greedy. I posted photos of one machine and the whatchamacallits in her case on a social media group for aficionados of such antiques. I suppose my price was pretty low as I got a flurry of interest, and packed the machine up using egg cartons for cushioning. The woman who bought it was thrilled at her good fortune, and paid me pronto. It arrived on her birthday. 

 

I was surprised that the hottest item in the clutch of extras was the manual. I tried to keep track of the sequence of requests, and between other deserving demands on my time managed to slip it into an envelope, address it and add a bunch of stamps. This woman, too, was quick to pay me, But further attention was increasingly diverted by the twins' graduation, whose celebration might best be described as vulnerable, and then the weather event that whipped through town taking trees and power lines with it. I completely forgot the featherweight group. 

 

Several days passed before I checked back and found a lengthy tirade about my ineptness as a seller. How dare I tease them with false promises and them blatantly ignore their offers to buy?

 

In a surprising twist of fate one of the women actually recognized my name. Odhner is, I suppose, somewhat rare. She came to my defense, saying she knew me twenty years ago when we were part of a quilt guild in California, and I was a nice person. I was probably busy and they should be kind. 

 

I almost burst out laughing. Not at the gossip exactly, but the ridiculousness of criticizing someone you have never and will never meet over a ten dollar item that makes ruffles. Were they really so inconvenienced by a few days' delay in obtaining something that is already older than their mothers? 

 

In a brief response I apologized, citing but a scant few of the issues hijacking my focus, saying I would get back to them when electricity was restored. I resisted the impulse to include a snippy remark. 

 

"Enjoy your unlimited internet, hot showers, dishwashers, and sewing machines!"

 

Benjamin is historically unhappy with lost power. It makes him angry. Or perhaps the fury is a decoy for sadness. In any event he has a lot to say about our current situation. 

 

"The power men are lazy! They are not working hard enough!! They should make my house a PRIORITY!!"

 

His tone reminded me of those women. 

 

I personally have never even considered putting my life in jeopardy by maneuvering enough current to fry squirrels, much less hoisted myself forty feet in the air to do it. I don't even hold the clamps when John rescues me from a dead battery. It seems presumptuous to make declarations about the eptness of employees who are paid and willing to restore my light on a dark night. 

 

Maybe there are other instances in which I would do well to withhold judgment.