baby, don't you cry, gonna bake a pie

A few evenings ago, Mrs. P and I went shopping as soon as I came home from work. When we returned home after an hour or so, we found this hand-written note (pictured above) lying on the cement step just inside our screen door. On a single sheet of lined notebook paper, torn from its spiral binding, the note was written in the unsteady hand of a teenager. It read:

Hello. My name is

Jin Yu  for from Cheltenham High School

The day before thanksgiving I

I am dropping off yourpies

you ordered on Wed Nov 25

(day before Thanksgiving

Please give me a call

to let me know what time

I should drop the pies off

215 - (phone number)

Thank you &

Happy Thanksgiving

The author was kind enough to offer a pronunciation of his name — Jin You — in parenthesis below the actual spelling of his name.

It took a few reads until we figured out that "yourpies" was actually "your pies." I asked my wife, a phenomenal and proud baker, if she had ordered pies from someone in the neighborhood. Every year, for the past 31, she single-handedly bakes and serves up a huge assortment of goodies from the oven to a houseful of freeloaders guests on the evening before Thanksgiving. So, I already knew the answer before the question left my lips. However, Mrs. P has been known to be charitable and it really wouldn't have surprised me if she ordered a pie from some forlorn young student as a goodwill gesture. Something I would never do in a million years.

Well, we came to the conclusion that she didn't order any pies and we knew that I certainly didn't order any pies. At this point, I would have dropped the issue, but not Mrs. P. She began to contact some surrounding neighbors via text message and Facebook. (Again, something I would never do in a million years.) Within minutes, she received negative replies from all. The mystery had come to a standstill.

The night before Thanksgiving is one day away. Did poor Jin Yu take pie orders from people in a house that looks like mine? Did he forget from whom he took orders? Will Jin Yu possibly be delivering pies to me that I did not order? Or has he figured out his error by now?

Hmm.... I wonder what kind of pies they are and I wonder if Jin Yu will have a happy Thanksgiving. If he gets stuck with those pies, I suppose he will.

www.joshpincusicrying.com

We have our own pies, thank you very much.