Story of the Day 4/ 12/ 2013

My children are trying to fill a role in Sarah's upcoming video.
You might have noticed that a lot of the recent stories revolve around this topic.
That is because it is a big video- her senior theses film- and it is consuming high parts of our lives.
That and our family room, breakfast room, kitchen, garage....

The part they are trying to fill is that of a high school student. A girl.
She has to look innocent, and guilty.
Filling this role has involved a lot of strange things.
Asking friends for referrals. Stalking people on Facebook. Making obscene phone calls.

My kids and I all asked numerous friends to refer women who looked the right age to play high schooler and who had some acting experience, and were willing to work for imaginary peanuts.
Hey, peanuts are expensive!

We got plenty of referrals.
Most were of 25 year olds who looked, 25.
A few of them looked 24 or even 23.
One looked at least 35.

Why is there such a dearth of high school girls?
Well, there isn't, but they were all busy.

Either that or their mothers took one look at the filmmakers and said, "No"
Or, worse, heard Aaron calling on the phone and asking to speak with their daughters , and said, "No!"
That is because of the heavy breathing.
Although, as far as I know, that was only for the one phone call.
And he was breathing heavily because he had been exercising.
Heavily.
Just before making the call.
Although,not just before, since Sarah realized he was going to appear to be "creepy" and made him rest for ten minutes before calling- although, his breathing was still a little heavy , even then.
But, at least, significantly less creepy,

And stalking.

My kids would get a name of some girl who was a friend of some friend, or a coworker,and then, since no one had met the young lady, we would locate her on Facebook and carefully evaluate each picture.

"Well, maybe she looks younger in this one...."
"If we had her unstyle her hair, would she look a little younger?"
"Clothes? Maybe she would look younger in different clothes?"

You would be amazed how many dressed-up, make-upped-up, trying to look 30 years old pics people who are 25 post on their FB walls.
Not just the one profile picture, but in their albums and in their....
You see, I have also found out that all of these tech savvy youngsters have zero security on their FB accounts.
Zero.
I know the names of their boy friends and girl friends, if they like Papa John's pizza with mushrooms, and which bar they prefer......

I have to keep resisting that Jewish mother urge to send them a message saying " Change your FB security, I can see too much!!!!"
And why am I looking at their FB pages?

Because I have a FB account, and my daughter, the filmmaker, doesn't.

Because of that, I am better at locating people.
Although, usually i am trying to locate old friends who moved 17 times since college and ......Not trying to locate actors for a video.
But I have some FB locating skills because of this.
So, when given the name of a potential actress, by a friend or a friend of a friend, or by the guys who mow our lawn, my daughter asks me to get onto my FB account and look them up, so she can see if they might just fit the role.
And I can, at least for a brief moment, impress my children with my feeble internet skills.
Oh, they are 22, 23, 26? They went to which high school? I can get to them via a friend named........
etc.
This is especially helpful when their name is Debbie Stein. You do not want to know how many FB users have that name.
Actally, I have no idea, since that was just a name I made up, not wanting to use some of the ones we actually checked.

At any rate, my kids, after much FB perusing, decided that one suggested actress might, just might, look young enough.
And she also seemed animated, in her pics- a good sign for an actress, although, one that can fool you.

So, we got her number, and Aaron, with some slightly dampened heavy breathing, called her.
She was interested.
He asked for her email address to send her the script.
You see, I am the one with the FB account.
And Aaron is the one who can talk on the phone.
Sarah could have a FB account, but since she hears nothing, and doesn't speak, Aaron, who hears, to some limited degree, with the use of a hearing aid, and speaks, even if with heavy breathing, gets that job.
He gets it because it is less embarrassing to have your brother with the heavy breathing call than to have your mother making phone calls for you.

Not that Sarah couldn't call...even though she cannot hear or talk, you see, she could.
There is this wonderful thing called a videophone.
We have one.
Sarah could call the girl with that.
Of course, the girl probably doesn't have a videophone, but there is this other wonderful thing called relay service.
Sarah could call them, give them a phone number for the young lady, and they would call and interpret between the two of them, being the voice for Sarah.
However, past experience has taught us that this can be even creepier than Aaron with his heavy breathing, because having some middle aged guy call up and announce "Hi , this is Sarah calling" tends to freak hearing people out more than a potentially lascivious call from a heavy breather.

I have no idea why.

At any rate, after Aaron had successfully called this young lady and gotten her to divulge her email address, Sarah sent a copy of the script and a note as to which pages the role was on.

And, the next morning, the email was back in Sarah's inbox and marked undeliverable.
We weren't sure if it was because the young lady's mailbox wouldn't' accept the script as an attachment, or because the email address was somehow "wrong."

After deciding the problems was probably the second one, Aaron made another call.
He asked the woman, "Is your email address... and he carefully spelled it out.

"No"

As it turns out, my son had missed hearing an "h" in the address.
For which, my deaf son, who was using a cell phone, was very apologetic.
The young lady may have thought he had been inattentive, on the first call.
Aaron was very apologetic to her, and afterwards, to me and to Sarah, for messing that detail up.
I meanwhile, was laughing that he thought he should need to apologize for that.

As Sarah will tell you, it is still better than having your mother make phone calls for you.