“Are you still in NYC and still stilt walking?” read the mysterious email. (Photo courtesy of Tropical Fete Inc.)
By Lana Schwartz | lana.schwartz925@gmail.com
In the year 2019, an email appeared in my inbox. The subject line was “Stilt walking?” It was from a woman named Pam, who worked for what appeared to be some sort of entertainment production company.
“Are you still in NYC and still stilt walking? You are in my database and I am looking for a stiltwalker for March 17th.”
I was still in New York City, but it was difficult to identify beyond that why this email had been sent to me. The question that I was still stilt walking implied that I was, at some point, stilt walking in the first place. That I was in some sort of database implied that I was proficient enough at stilt walking to do it professionally. I had never stilt walked. Not even once.
“Please let me know!” Pam ended her email, signaling her urgency for my stilt-walking services.
I was puzzled, but wrote it off as spam. Then, more emails arrived.
“Stilt walker avail?” the email would start, asking me my rates and availability, and if I might want a travel fee for the trouble of getting to Colonia, New Jersey. The prospect of stilt walking began to seem tempting. It was more lucrative than I would have thought.
Ultimately I never responded to the emails, or learned to stilt walk. I chalked it up to a prank. How else could I wind up in a stilt walking database?
I think this is the trademark of a really good prank. I can’t trace it back to anyone. It didn’t mess with my life in a material way, but it caused me to question my sense of reality.
Recently, I believe I fell victim to another one.
I needed a new loaf pan. I had left mine at a friend’s house during a party and it was time to replace it. I ordered a loaf pan from the company OXO. I looked forward to baking banana bread.
The box arrived. It looked like a normal box, with nothing amiss. But when I opened the box, nothing was in there. That’s when I noticed that there had been a clean slice made to the side of the box. Someone had extracted my $20 loaf pan and left me with the only seemingly intact box.
I wrote to OXO and explained my predicament; my package had been stolen. They offered to send me another one if — and only if — I would pick it up from a designated FedEx pickup location. I agreed to these terms.
About a week later, I was notified my loaf pan had arrived. Great, I thought, and went to pick it up. A Walgreens employee led me to the secure locker where they keep the packages. As soon as I saw the package, I knew. Again, there had been a neat incision made to the top of the box, leaving it with only the illusion of being sealed.
“The package is empty,” I told the Walgreens employee.
“You still have to sign for it,” he said.
So I signed for the empty box. I explained the situation to the Walgreens employee, who empathized. The store’s customers who overheard my plight did as well. Someone in line recommended a store in Fort Greene for buying kitchen supplies. That wasn’t really the point anymore.
A $20 OXO loaf pan had been stolen from me twice, presumably by the same person, using the same set of tricks. Why me? And why these loaf pans?
I went home and I wrote to OXO, explaining the situation. I asked for my money back. They said no.
“We’re so sorry to hear about the issue you’ve experienced. Unfortunately, we would only be able to reship this order as the original order was delivered but not received. We are unable to issue refunds on missing packages. We do apologize for any inconvenience.”
I said, sure, why not, send me another loaf pan, unconvinced one would ever materialize. Sharing my plight with my friends and family, my college roommate generously offered to send me a pair of loaf pans.
About another week later I received notice that, once again, my package had been delivered. I went to Walgreens, expecting to find another empty box. The Walgreens employee led me to the locker again. He opened the locker. He handed me the package. And this time, I could tell, there was a loaf pan inside.
I now own three loaf pans.
Sometimes, when I have a hard time making sense of the world, I turn to a quote from The White Album, Joan Didion’s famous book of essays.
“I believe this to be an authentically senseless chain of correspondences, but in the jingle-jangle morning of that summer it made as much sense as anything else did.”
To be clear, Didion is writing about events surrounding the Manson murders and her proximity to those involved. Still, it resonates with me all the same.
My loaf pans getting stolen in this strange, nonsensical way makes about as much sense as anything else does. And that’s why I’m choosing to believe, like the stilt walking emails, it’s another really good prank.
Lana Schwartz is a writer who was born and raised in Queens and today lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared on The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of the books “Build Your Own Romantic Comedy” and “Set Piece.”
