This Package is Fragile

Several years ago, I was a lowly unpaid intern at a publishing company. Although I slaved away for no pay, one of the benefits of the internship was receiving a copy of everything (books and kits) that I helped edit. At the end of the summer, the company asked for my mailing address so they could send me copies of all my projects which was great, but since I was a college student in between addresses, I listed both my dorm and my permanent home address. A couple months later, I finally started receiving packages at my dorm and was very excited to see polished copies of books and kits I'd simply seen manuscripts for. A few days after the first package arrived, I got a call from my mom who informed me that she too had received the same package. Great! I was basically getting two copies of everything which meant I could give some away as gifts or whatnot! My mom was pretty excited too, getting a chance to see what I had worked on during my internship. I received a new package about every two weeks for the next couple months. With each package, my mom would call me to discuss my experience with the project which was fun because I had forgotten all the projects so receiving them was a great way to jog my memory of my internship experience.

Two months into this process, I was excited to receive what was my final package. It was larger than most, indicating that it was probably a kit. (The company made many kits which would include books as well as other items like toys and posters.) The kits were always the most exciting because I had only seen the text for the books, so it was always surprising to see what else came with the book. Well, this package came with a lot of extra components! When I opened up the box, all these products immediately fell to the floor. This included a deck of cards with hearts on the back, a feather, a blindfold, and a red plastic thing which I discovered on the box was a "personal massager." After consulting with friends and the internet, I learned that this is code for a vibrator. Woah! I knew I had read some racy text at work, but I had no idea it would result in a kit like this!

This is when I remembered that my mom was receiving everything I was. I dreading the expected phone call and any potential negative reactions. How was I going to explain this? Well, I should have remembered that my mom is French, and when she called me, she was ecstatic. She thought the kit was great! She made no mention of the vibrator, and I think we both win for that, though I still wonder what exactly she loved about the kit. Well, I try not to think about that too much.