The Truth is Out There and Mrs. Burney Knows the Way

Mrs. Burney called. Again. This was not a surprise since she calls twice a day—once at midmorning and the other at precisely 3:15. Usually she just asks to simply leave a voice message for Mr. L but for the past few days she has insisted on talking to him. Finally he took her call. Five minutes later she called back:

"I just spoke with a very nice man, Ronald Reagan I think was his name. He told me to talk to you about setting up an appointment with him. What time works in his schedule?"

I tried to tell her these three simple facts:

1) Mr. L is not and will never be Ronald Reagan
2) I do not keep schedules of any kind for Ronald Reagan &
3) I do not actually work for Ronald Reagan and she might have the wrong number

“But I just spoke with him,” she insisted, “he told me you would be able to figure everything out.”

How kind of you, Ronald Reagan. (So wind swept).

And here’s the dish: I’ve known for weeks that Mrs. Burney was a little wacky…it’s just that it never occurred to me that she might actually be a legitimate whack job until that very moment. She sounds so normal on the phone, like a kind grandmother who bakes cookies and hangs lace curtains in the windows.

So back to this afternoon’s call: “This is Mrs. Burney again, I’m calling to confirm my August 27 meeting with Mr. L.”

I naively thought that she had finally figured it all out and was really going to be in a meeting with Mr. L. That is the only reason why I called him to see if I could transfer the call.

He was stumped: “Mrs. Burney? Meeting? I’m not sure…” And then it hit him: “OH! The crazy lady. You remember that show with Scully and Mulder?”

“The X-Files? Sure.”

“Well, yeah, she thinks I’m Mulder. You know, Agent Mulder? She calls and leaves messages about all the alien sightings she’s had. So if you have fifteen minutes to spare you can listen to her—it’s actually kind of interesting, if you’re into that kind of stuff. Which I’m not.”

(Of course, Mr. L)

I clicked back over to Mrs. Burney and she absolutely did NOT want to leave a voice message. She wanted to talk to a real person. Guess what? I qualified!

"Well,” she lowered her voice to a whisper and it sounded like her hand might be cupped over the receiver, “I just wanted to tell you about the disk I saw flying over Willoughby Street and I saw it land and I saw the door open. Willoughby Street, okay?”

She started to elaborate over all the details and pretty soon I found myself caught up in the story: “Willoughby Street, you said?” I propped my elbows on the cool granite desk top and cupped my hand over the receiver, “Now how far from Willoughby did it land?”