Names and Places

One night a few months ago, I heard the doorbell ring. Someone delivered a package to me from LL Bean. My name and address were on the front.

I told Mr. J, "I didn't order anything from LL Bean." But maybe someone sent me a gift out of the blue, for no reason? So I opened it. Inside was one of the ugliest shirts I've ever seen. You know that LL Bean look. Aggressively plain navy with some sort of snot-colored print. It was my size, though.

There was no gift card with it, but the invoice said the item had indeed been paid for.

So I called LL Bean. And surprisingly enough, after a very short wait, I got a real human being on the line. She read me the last 4 digits of the credit card used to purchase the ugly shirt. Not my card. Whew!

The question remained: Why did this hideous waste of cotton arrive on my doorstep? And then the customer service rep and I figured it out. The shirt belonged to the other Anne Johnson.

The other Anne Johnson lives down the street in the next block. (I notice her house is up for sale). Things used to get really mixed up between our two houses, but in recent years about all I've gotten is thank-you notes from the Boy Scouts.

I told the LL Bean customer rep that I would just schlep the item down to the other Anne Johnson. Which I did. She wasn't home. I left it in the mailbox.

Now it's just a few months later, and Mr. J and I find ourselves isolated in our house, with two daughters who hardly ever see eye-to-eye absolutely united in their demand that we not go out.

Bowing to the requests from the old kith-and-kin, Mr. J set out to order some groceries from the local store where we do the vast majority of our shopping. We can walk to this store from our house. But to get our asparagus and oranges delivered, we had to go through InstaCart.

At precisely 5:52 yesterday evening, InstaCart sent Mr. J a text message, reporting that our $100 of groceries had been delivered. Only they hadn't. Nor were they placed on the porch at any later hour, and they weren't here this morning.

My nimble fingers did a Google Maps search, and wouldn't you know it? There's another house with our exact address in the very next borough! When I called the house up on Maps, it was clearly and distinctly a single-family dwelling.

Someone else got my oranges. And InstaCart is out of the question, because Mr J spent 90 minutes on hold with them trying to sort this out ... and got nowhere. Never even talked to a human being.

I'm glad I stocked up on March 10, but I didn't buy any perishable fruits and vegetables. I didn't get cheese, either. Guess Mr. J and I will have to do without those luxuries. First world problems.

This is a mixed-up, fucked up country at the best of times. These are not the best of times.