The last time ever that Amanda visited her parental home, she didn’t expect it to be the last time. She was merely coming home from college for a night. No-one knew that, when leaving the home the next morning to board the train to her college city, it’d be the last time she’d ever seen this home.
Fifteen years later, after a long journey through the province and the care system, Amanda moved back to the area. She sometimes wondered what had become of her parental home. Her parents had sold it many years ago and she’d herself handed in her key several years before that.
One day, she was talking to a virtual stranger, a temp worker coming to care for her in her new care home, probably just a handful of times. As Amanda told him about where she’d grown up and for a reason she didn’t even know herself mentioned her parental home address, the carer was amazed. “When I worked as a pizza delivery guy, I used to get orders for that house about once a week.” He started telling her stories about the time the residents had complained of a hair in their pizza, a blond hair, even though none of the workers at the pizza place were blond.
Even though Amanda knew that the house wouldn’t look the same at all if she went back, not least because most of the furniture had been either hand-crafted or hand-picked by her father and because the large birch tree in the front yard had been cut down before her parents sold the house, she delighted in hearing the staff’s anecdote. Her parents never ordered food delivery. The world can be a small place and yet a town can feel so big…
This piece was inspired by Fandango’s Story Starter #207. I couldn’t fit in the exact fragment. The piece is mostly autobiographical, including the tale about the temp worker who used to be a pizza delivery guy. I can’t remember whether his anecdote about the blond hair was actually about my parental home’s new residents.
A Multitude of Musings 
Wow, there is a lot of back story I would love to read. Good story!
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Yeah, indeed. Fandango’s prompt reminded me of my parental home, which my parents no longer live in and which I last saw in 2007. I may weave this into an actual short story.
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One of my coworkers was telling me how about 25 years after he had moved out of his home, well his whole family, he saw that the home was for sale and he rebought it and lives in it now! Funny story because he didn’t tell the realtor that he used to live there and she was telling stories about the “original” owners, which were false! One story was that the hallway was so wide because the guy was in a wheelchair. That wasn’t true! Apparently my friends dad had the hallway built like that on purpose because he liked it wide and open!
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Wow, that’s such a great story! Thanks for sharing.
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im wondering if there even was a hair or if they made it up!
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LOL, good point.
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A great memory. Thanks for joining in.
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Thanks so much for commenting.
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this is a really great story Astrid! I enjoyed it!
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Thank you!
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About two seconds after the pizza box is open in this house it has a cat hair in it already… that is one of the treasures of owning three cats. Ha, ha, ha! It is amazing how we can easily connect to people we think we have nothing in common with. As they say, it’s a small world!
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Thanks for sharing. No cat here, but I have long hair and regularly forget to tie it back before eating.
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You’re welcome.
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Interesting story. I love that it continues in the comments.
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Thank you! 🙂
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