The Card In The Hat

You may remember back in March I told you the saga of an American business card found in an American Marine’s cap, which had made its way to the UK via Afghanistan.  You can read the full story here and here.  The card belonged to Shanea Vernon, Sales Representative.  I wanted to discover how and why the card was tucked into the cap.

I also wanted to test the Six Degrees of Separation theory, but my impatient readers simply Googled Shanea Vernon, Sales Representative and found a possibility through Facebook.  Donning my Creepy Stalker head, I tried sending a message.

Nothing happened.  A whole lot of nothing.  Until ten days ago.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know that, because I don’t check my Laughing Housewife email account as regularly as I should, because most people contact me via comments.  It was therefore five days later that I learned Shanea had written to me!

Here she is:

Shanea has given me permission to share some of her email, so I will let her tell you in her own words, the story of how I frightened a total stranger halfway across the world:

Last Sunday afternoon I went to church and then headed to my aunt’s house for a cookout in Valley Center CA. Being that I’ve been traveling a lot lately, I haven’t seen my aunt and cousins in over a month. My cousin Nikki asked me if I’ve ever googled my name, while giving her a strange look, my response was no and why. With excitement in her voice she exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, I totally forgot to tell you…. One day I googled your name and there are people on the internet looking for you”. She pulled up a website on the ipad with a title called “The Laughing Housewife”. I began to read, but for some weird reason my heart was beating fast and I was nervous/paranoid with thoughts about why someone would be looking for me, especially with the name “The Laughing Housewife”, I just knew it had to be a joke she was playing on me. I continued to read the article, “Do you know Shanea Vernon, sales representative”……..and…………..I LOVED IT! I feel honored that someone in Stockport England came to know about my existence! I even read the comments of your readers and I must say, they also are amazing people with a great sense of humor! I laughed plenty of times.

My name is Shanea Vernon, pronounced as “sha-knee-a”. […] I started a company called EntertainmentPC 3 years ago. We have kiosks in malls that finance and sell electronics.

I’m pretty sure I met [the man who had the card] in San Diego CA which means that he’s probably a marine I’m guessing. Maybe the six degrees of separation could actually work being the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth in six steps or fewer. Maybe I met him in the mall and he either purchased a laptop from me, or was inquiring about a purchase. There might have been and instant attraction/connection and then he deployed to Afghanistan but held on to my business card which was folded and put in his hat. Although I have no clue who he is or how we met, I find your article somewhat fascinating and my mind is now inquiring who, what, when, where, and why. […] When I read the article I was like “oh my goodness, that was such a romantic and sweet story, I felt like I was watching it on TV and then I said…wait, that’s me”!

Sadly, there’s no happy ending for us strangers (that’s you and me, readers, poking our noses into an innocent person’s life): we still don’t know who the marine is; or why he had Shanea’s card.  I’m going with the theory that he intended to ask her out but was suddenly shipped out; and had to buy his laptop elsewhere.

If anyone wants to turn this story into a novel, I have Shanea’s business card and a percentage of the movie profits will buy it from me.

See: stalking can be good.

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Polls & Up The Pole (I Must Be)

Image via Wikipedia

Results are in!

According to my readers, the correct definition of the word eubodicly is:

A particularly successful bowel motion

That’s about your level, I guess.

Did I mention that mine was the vote that tipped the balance?

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You guys are cheats, or I am slow: there is no six degrees of separation now that Google is King.  Many of you found Shanea Vernon by typing her name and clicking search.  Have you no romance in your internet-withered souls?

Well done to Aquatom, at least, who knows Kevin Bacon via the movie Mystic River, which he hasn’t seen (it’s too complicated to explain; read his comment here).

I emailed my friend to ask her to get her Louse to check the business card for details (which I did not want to do, believing that the six degree thing was more fun.  Apparently I’m alone in that), and it is indeed the Shanea Vernon who works for Entertainmentpc, though she is now the managing member, not a sales representative.  I think it is party planning.

I have requested to become her friend on Facebook.  If she accepts, and I don’t get locked up for stalking, I’ll explain to her how a stranger in Stockport came to know of her existence on the other side of the world, and proceeded to tell the whole world about her.  If I’m still not locked up for stalking, I believe she’ll be happy, because any publicity is good publicity, right?  Right?

Where’s my orange jumpsuit?

Do You Know Shanea Vernon, Sales Representative?

Let’s see if this six degrees of separation thing really works.

Image via Wikipedia

The Hub and I were visiting some friends yesterday.  Their son and his lovely girlfriend were there.  He is in the Army.  He and a colleague were on an RAF course recently and told the instructor that their nicknames were Maverick and Goose.  I can’t remember which one he was, so I’ll call him Moose.

This was the first time we had seen Moose since he returned from Afghanistan.  He was telling us some tales, and his little brother – shall we call him Mouse or Loose?  Or Louse? – showed us an American Army cap to illustrate one of them.  Moose had traded caps with a GI (are they still called that?).  One of those tight, pillbox-type hats with a peak that, in movies, are worn low over the eyes to make the soldier look disciplined and menacing.

Louse was fiddling with the hat as we chatted, when he discovered a worn business card tucked inside.  We passed it around the table and wondered why it was there.  Had the soldier (male) asked for it, or been given it, by Shanea Vernon, Sales Representative, because of a mutual attraction/attraction on one side and politeness on the other, or for a possible future business transaction?

Learning, to my shock, that I am a romantic at heart – or that I watch too many romcoms – I favour the idea that they met just before he was going off to war; felt something instinctual, animal and badly timed; and he kept her card in his cap so that it was always with him. 

The card had been folded up small and was badly creased: had he taken it out on cold desert nights and stroked it, thinking wistfully of the woman who gave it to him?  Or the new computer she sold to him and which his kids were now stickying up with their grubby, peanut butter and jellied hands?  Or the car he hopes to buy with the wages he’s saved while on his tour of duty?  I forgot to see what Shanea Vernon was representing, so I have to speculate.

What if Moose, by swapping caps, became the star that crossed potential lovers?  What if Shanea Vernon has the only thing for sale in existence that the soldier wanted but couldn’t afford to buy at the time he obtained her card?

What if I explode from never knowing the answers to all of these questions?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to ask the people you know to ask the people they know to ask the people they know if they know Shanea Vernon.  Then to ask them the question: what, specifically, does she sell?

By the way, if any of your friends of friends of friends know Kevin Bacon, he is an acceptable substitute.