Today, I’d like to talk about a societal problem that has plagued the nation since the dawn of the first audio-recording device: the outgoing voicemail message.

To record the outgoing message takes skill, as one tries to strike that fine line between “Friendly and happy to hear from you” and “Telemarketers need not leave a message, or I will hunt you down and talk to you about insurance premiums while you’re trying to eat dinner.” It’s a delicate balance, and one I have yet to achieve.

My sister has a lovely outgoing recording. “If you’re looking for Kim, you’ve found her! Leave a message.” Fun, short . . . but a little too telemarketer-encouraging, if you ask me. Plus, I don’t want anyone to leave a message. That might make me feel guilty when I don’t call back.

On the other end is the ultra-professional message. (Someone in my household has this type of greeting, and it’s not me, but I’ll say no more.) “You have reached John Doe. I am unavailable at the moment. Please leave a message and I will respond accordingly in due time.” This is a little too standoffish and condescending to me. Plus, again, why are you telling people to leave a message?

There’s always the pre-loaded automated greeting, in which a robot tells the caller that they’ve reached 800-555-1212, and that no one is available to take their call. Tempting, but I like to have verification that I’ve actually called the right person. I have no less than 12 Kathys in my contact list, and I depend on being able to recognize their voice in their message to tell me what type of message to leave. (Kathy T: “Hey, it’s me! Give me a call, and in the meantime, give Miss Hannah-Banana a hug for me!” as opposed to Kathy B: “Hello, it’s Stacey. I just emailed you back that contract you submitted for editing.” Could get tricky.)

Back in college, my roommates and I perfected the art of the outgoing message. I can still remember all the words of our message, sung to the Brady Bunch tune: “Here’s the story/of a girl named Stacey/living with Heather, Deb and Dee/None of them are at home, what a bummer/they'll call you back, you'll see . . .” I won’t go on, but it was long, obnoxious, and irritating. We thought we were hilarious. Someone had to really want to talk to us to sit through that off-tune stinker.

Hmm. You know, I think we were on to something.

Many thanks to my colleague Rob, who, when I said “I need a blog idea! Help!” shot off a few misfires (“Seasonal footwear? The versatility of toast?”) did stumble upon “Leaving the proper outgoing message?” Thanks. 

Spring arrived in town today, and she was not happy.

When she showed up at my house, the evidence that I hadn’t been alone was everywhere. Old Man Winter had left his snow all over the lawn. (Believe me, the number of times I’ve asked him to clean up after himself . . . it does no good. I wind up shoveling up his mess myself, only to have him dump more right after I’ve cleaned up.) Stuff that I’ve bought just for him—shovels, a roof rake, a generator—there was just too much evidence around the house for Spring to ignore. She knew I’d been seeing another season, and she was mad.

“How could you do this to me?” she stormed, trampling the daffodils. Great, I thought. Now they’ll never come up.

“Sweetheart. I’ve been praying for you to come back to me for months. You have to believe me. This thing with Winter . . . it means nothing. I didn’t even want it to happen.”

This was absolutely true. It’s not like I had the least bit of interest in having Winter move in. I would’ve been perfectly happy to have Autumn stay around until Spring decided to show up. But I woke up one morning and Autumn was just . . . gone. Winter, probably sensing my vulnerability, swooped in like a white knight, showering me with gifts, like a pretty dusting of sparkling frost in December, and even giving me a white Christmas. I shouldn’t have let the beauty fool me. Beneath the stardust veneer, Winter can be cruel and cold. So, so cold.

I was desperate. I started to beg. “I tell you, I’ve been praying for you to come back to me! Look! I even cleaned for you!” (It was true. I’d scrubbed the walls last week in the hopes that it would convince Spring that I really was committed to having her back in my life.) “See what I bought for you?” I said, pointing to the seed packets on the kitchen table. “I’ve been waiting for you. I thought we could plant them together.”

Spring sniffed. She looked around again. “At least you used protection,” she mumbled, looking at the stack of gloves, hats, and scarves that were piled up by the front door.

“That’s right, I did!” I said. I thought I was winning her over. I saw a glimmer of hope, like a timid crocus blossoming in the snow. But Spring can be a fickle, fickle woman.

“Maybe,” she said, teasing me with her warm breath, “maybe . . . I’ll come back in April.”

And with that, she was gone. Winter was still freeloading in my back yard, driving my heating bill up, and generally making my life miserable. I was broken-hearted. But a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.

“Come on,” I said to Winter, pulling on my gloves. “I may not like you much, but you sure do seem to like me, seeing as you won’t leave me alone.”

I’m not proud. And I do miss Spring. But at least Winter, with all of his chilly attitude, brings me a shamrock shake once in a while.

On Tuesday, my novel Ordinary Boy will hit bookstores (you can pick it up on Amazon as of today). It’s been a long time coming. About twenty-four years, give or take.

Let me explain. The story behind the book goes back to early 1991, when the news hit the hallways of my high school that two of our former classmates had been murdered by their stepfather. We had something like eight people die my senior year—car accidents, overdoses, the usual teenage fare—and I was getting a little tired of all the dying going on. But there was one detail about this spectacularly awful death that bothered me. According to the high school rumor mill, the boy my age (we’ll call him “K”) had been shot while hiding in his closet.

It was a detail that bothered me for years. So much so that twenty years later, when a paramedic at my old job mentioned his hobby was researching—ancestry, court cases, that kind of thing—the first thing I asked him was if he could find out what had happened to K’s killer. I knew the guy had been caught, but didn’t know much past that.

My paramedic came through. Besides reporting that the murderer had been sentenced to four consecutive life terms, he mentioned one small, monumentally important detail. K hadn’t been hiding in his closet at all. The rumor mill had gotten it wrong.

The weight of the world lifted off my shoulders that day. Wonderful news! I mean, sure, K was still dead, but no longer did he haunt my mind, crouching in the closet, holding his breath, hoping his stepfather’s wrath would pass him by. What a relief! All those years, I thought that poor kid was hiding . . . hmm. You know, that would make an interesting twist in a . . . oh, book, or something.

 So I started outlining a story about a kid growing up in the ’80s, trying to navigate his way through puberty, avoiding the school bully, making a friend and finding a girlfriend. I knew where it was heading. As much as I adored my main character, Curtis Price, his sense of humor and his vulnerability, things would not end well for our friend Curtis.

I didn’t know K well—I knew nothing about his hobbies, his friends, whom he dated, what kind of music he listened to, or what kind of car he drove. I’m certain Curtis resembles him not at all. The town, the details of his life, the neighborhood where he lived, the number of siblings he had, none of these remain the same in Ordinary Boy. But still, that sense of being an ordinary boy in an ordinary New England town who wasn’t really noticed until this one horrible thing happened—that came from K.

I can only hope I did all right by him.

“Reading Stacey Longo's Ordinary Boy is like opening presents on Christmas morning: the excitements of pathos, humor, terror, and surprise keep coming in this touching and relentlessly honest tale of growing up in small-town America. Longo is an original, and Curtis Price, the protagonist and narrator of her novel, is an inspired and wholly believable creation. Ordinary Boy sounds the depths of youth, adolescence, and young adulthood in a voice at once deft and ghostly and heartbreaking. Huck Finn, Nick Adams, Holden Caulfield—they all would've ‘got’ Curtis Price perfectly.” ~ David Daniel, author of Reunion and White Rabbit

Ordinary Boy is out now! You can buy it here: http://tinyurl.com/ordinaryboy

We all struggle with moral dilemmas throughout the day. Sometimes we make the right choice, even if we don’t want to. Sometimes we don’t. Here are some moral questions that came up for me recently in which I can’t promise I made the most honorable choices.

• Is it wrong to sell store-baked goodies at a bake sale?
• If my slippers kind of look like real shoes, can I wear them to work?
• What about pajamas that sort of look like a nice silk suit? (I’d leave the kimono at home, of course.)
• How many times through the buffet line is considered too many? Is a fourth time too greedy? Will the bride and groom even notice?
• If Cheetos are made with real cheese, shouldn’t they be allowed on the Atkins diet?
• Is it really that important to read a book all the way through to the end before leaving a Goodreads review?
• Does watching Survivor make me white trash?
• Does it really matter, since I’m not going to stop watching Survivor either way?
• Shouldn’t watching Downton Abbey counteract the white trash Survivor label?
• Is the Five Second Rule null and void if the cat licks what I dropped before I pick it up again?
• Can cat saliva kill you?
• Will people be able to tell if I refill the designer hand soap bottle in the bathroom with V05 shampoo?
• If I scratch my white car, can’t I just use Wite-Out® to fix it?
• If my skirt comes down past my knee, do I have to wear nylons? Can’t I get away with wearing knee-highs?
• Is it okay to use your sleeve as a napkin if there’s nobody in the room with you?
  

Listen: we all make poor decisions. That’s the inherent fallibility of human nature. I am fully aware that it would be more polite to use a napkin instead. But sometimes, you’ve got to live a little.