Charlie fiddled nervously with her phone, still not sure what to send. Maybe just tell the boys to met her someplace? She just didn’t know. Maybe it wasn’t her place to tell them their parents were here at all. This version of Mary and John didn’t even know they were going to have kids, so how weird would it be if their fully grown sons showed up at their door? She chewed her lip thinking, wondering what she could do to make this situation easier on everyone, and coming up dry.
“Okay, awkward,” she said at last, sighing, and pushing her drink away, half finished. “I’m just gonna get this out of the way and you can take it or leave, but I advise take it,” she said in a businesslike way. “You’re in a whole new decade, whole new millennium even. Technology has gone nuts, Reality TV has taken over, it’s a mess. If you need help,” she pulled a small, much abused spiral notebook, the kind usually meant for leaving messages, from her back pocket along with a pen. She wrote her name and room number on it and tore it off, handing it over to him, “you can find me. I promise not to make fun of you when you say far out or whatever you crazy kids were saying in the 70’s.” She smiled in what she hoped was a winning way. “You and Mary both.”