Friday, September 25, 2020

Impersonator

Tom’s been looking for a used car to purchase for his and Alyssa’s use. The one she currently drives to school and work is fine as long as it starts but that’s the iffy part, so he wants something a bit more reliable. He’s been perusing FB marketplace for vehicles. But see, the thing is, he doesn’t actually have a FB account. He doesn’t seem to think it’s necessary for him to have an account because I have one and I can keep in touch with his sisters and extended family for him. Huh. Of course this means that he’s using my account to look at vehicles and message the owners. I don’t actually care that he’s doing this. What’s the big deal? Well, the big deal comes along when he messages these people and pretends to be me talking to them, saying things like, “My husband is the one who will be coming to look at the car. I’ll hurry him along.” Yeah. I have never ‘hurried him along’ in all the years of our marriage. But this isn’t even that big a deal. It’s kind of funny to read the messages he sends out in which he’s impersonating me. But then he was communicating with a woman who is selling her vehicle and she mentioned that her son would be the one to show my husband the car because she is in the hospital receiving chemo or leukemia. Tom, pretending to be me, said to her, something along the lines of: Sorry to hear about the chemo. I went through that for breast cancer a few years ago. Just keep the faith and everything will be fine. You guys, please tell me that you KNOW I wouldn’t say that? Okay, so no, I didn’t actually say it but she thinks I did and it’s just so trite. No one who has been through cancer treatments would say that! We’d say something like, “Oh, I’m so sorry you’re going through chemo. That sucks so much. I’m wishing you the best.” We would not tell her to ‘keep the faith’ and ‘everything will turn out okay.’ It doesn’t always turn out okay, damn it! And those of us who have faced serious health issues know this. We don’t say that to each other. We just don’t. It’s kind of like those of us who’ve had a child in the NICU or suffered a loss. We don’t say things like, “Well, at least you know you can get pregnant” to a woman who’s recently suffered a miscarriage. We don’t say things like, “Hey, at least you have one baby” to someone who’s lost one of their twins. We know the odds aren’t always in our favor. We know that things can go bad from one heartbeat to the next. Keep the faith? Are you fucking kidding me? I ought to slap him for that. I know he meant well. I know that; which is why I’m taking deep breaths and thinking before I speak. I just…I don’t know how to explain to him why what he wrote was wrong. I don’t think he’d get it and it would probably hurt his feelings. So…I’m letting it all out here and reminding any readers who haven’t been through sucky times to maybe think about this stuff and how they might want someone to respond to them if they were to suffer something horrific. Just think about it.

1 comment:

Julie said...

I'm just sitting here shock laughing because yeah, that's a bit extreme but at least he tried. I think I would be annoyed, though. I'm pretty sure no one would bat an eye if he admitted that he was a man and using his wife's social media. LOL