December 21, 2004

I returned home from Beverly Hills late last Monday to find that the Kitchen-Aid stand mixer I’d ordered had arrived. I’ve managed somehow to survive all these with my mother’s old Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, which may very well have been manufactured before I was, but it has finally begun to die. It is not going gently into that good night; in fact, its raging against the dying of the light has assumed far noisier a tone than one suspects Dylan Thomas’s father ever did. So I was delighted, though not surprised, to see that its replacement had arrived on schedule.

What surprised me was another box, addressed to me by hand with a postmark from Florence, Kentucky. I have never been to Florence, Kentucky–in fact, I have never been to Kentucky–nor am I aware of knowing anybody who lives there. Further investigation turned up evidence even more mystifying: the return address was that of an apartment I lived in three years ago. “What is this about?” I thought. “Could I possibly have invented a way to send packages forward in time and then forgotten all about it? Am I a character in a Philip K. Dick story? Am I about to turn into a paranoid schizophrenic? What on earth is happening? What could this possibly be?”

What it was, in the event, was a beautiful plastic pie protector.

This is what I surmise happened.

Someone who reads my blog and lives in or near Florence, Kentucky

1. was touched by the incompetence I displayed by stepping on the pie I’d made for Thanksgiving dinner and decided to send me a gift that would prevent such a disaster from recurring;

2. looked through the archives to find identifying information and, through judicious googling, figured out my name;

3. used dogpile or some such white pages web site to find my address, but was initially stymied to see two addresses listed under my name;

4. assumed, correctly, that since there were probably not two people with my (rather distinctive) name in New York City, these were my current address and my former address, and hit upon the brilliant plan of sending to one address and using the other address as the return; and

5. sent me an incredibly kind and thoughtful gift–one that I intend to use on Christmas Day to transport the peach pie I’m planning to make for E.S.’s father.

If this is indeed what happened, I would very much appreciate the culprit’s e-mailing me so that I can send him or her a proper thank you.

And if this isn’t what happened, can anybody come up with an alternative explanation?