Not too long ago I came home and found a message on my answering machine from Jessica at Limited Too. I no longer recall precisely why Jessica was phoning because my memory is a spaghetti colander. But I tried to return the call by phoning a nearby Limited Too and asking for Jessica.

The salesperson was a nice young woman, and she informed me politely that I had the wrong number.

“Oh, no,” I explained, “I had a call on my answering machine from Jessica telling me about a sale.”

And so the salesperson patiently explained to me, “She’s just this girl, she’s sort of automated. She’s, like, from Ohio or something.”

Consequently, I called a Limited Too in Ohio. There are a lot of Limited Too stores in Ohio, and it was going to be a long shot if I found the correct one. Still, I tried. And I was informed by another very gracious salesperson that Jessica “is an automated voice. She’s not a real person.”

Ah, yes: The old Pretend Teenager Ploy. Gets us every time. Pretend Jessica is merely a part of the Limited Too’s marketing effort.

And yet Jessica was only one of many prerecorded voices that called me this autumn. I also heard from political candidates and lobbying groups.

Now I like Limited Too just fine — probably about as much as any balding, middle-aged guy who isn’t a transvestite — and when my daughter was younger a sizable part of her extremely fashionable wardrobe came from there.

And I like most of the candidates and lobbying groups who called me. Not all. But most. They have my home phone number, I presume, because at some point I have given it to them or to a similarly minded organization. The technical term for this sort of phone call is an “autodial,” and in theory the Federal Communications Commission prohibits a company, an organization, or, well, Jessica, from dialing a residential phone unless the owner of the phone has given the company, the organization, or Jessica permission.

Nonprofits have the right to do it, too, because we all know there is no better way to encourage us to open our hearts and our wallets than by having a prerecorded voice call us during dinnertime.

That’s the thing: Are any of us really happy when we race like madmen to the telephone, only to discover that it’s a prerecorded voice awaiting us? Of course not. Most of us, I imagine, hate the prerecorded voice on the phone even more than we loathe the 700 Viagra spams we all receive daily or the multiple copies we are mailed of the very same catalog.

A college pal of mine, Adam Turteltaub, is writing a book called “Everything is Annoying,” and he tells me the phenomenon of the autodial might merit a page of its own. Why? Well, as my friend Amena Smith, a senior buyer with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, explains, “I rarely run to my computer or mailbox, but I often run to catch a telephone call.”

And yet companies and politicians and lobbying groups continue to raise our blood pressure needlessly. This is called “marketing.”

There is, of course, the National Do-Not-Call Registry, if you do not want to receive calls with prerecorded messages. It’s clearly not infallible, however, because my wife tells me we’re on it.

Now, make no mistake, I’m not mad at Pretend Jessica for spending so much time on the phone. I have a teenage daughter, too, and so I understand. I just wish that one of her Pretend Parents would remind her that she has some Pretend Homework to do.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 3, 2006.)

Once again, it’s time to trim the Christmas tree. If you haven’t already decorated yours, I have two words for you: napkin rings.

Sure, you could have an elegant theme tree, impeccably decorated with (for instance) sienna brown bulbs, gold ribbons and petite white tree lights. Or you could just stick the tips of the branches through napkin rings.

This is how my mother once had us decorate our tree. In all fairness, wWe were living in Florida at the time, and the tree was an artificial balsam that was pink. Some people frown upon artificial pink trees, but none of them live in Florida. Moreover, a lot of the napkin rings were shaped like tropical fish, which made the tree look particularly festive — or, perhaps, like an episode of “SpongeBob Gets Impaled on a Tree Branch.”

There were several reasons why we trimmed our tree with napkin rings, but the main one, I think, was that my mother had lost her mind. It was only temporary. And, in all fairness, there was a lot of stress in her life, including the teeny-tiny detail that my father had been hospitalized for a big chunk of the autumn. We also had moved to Florida from Connecticut a couple of months earlier, and my mother had moved there under duress. She hadn’t wanted to leave Connecticut, and she felt, I think, not merely like a stranger in a strange land, but in fact like a person who had been abducted by aliens.

She would, eventually, get into the spirit of Christmas in Florida; she would even sprinkle instant mashed potato flakes along the house’s front steps to replicate snow — which also allowed my family to become intimately acquainted with the area’s rich and varied insect life. Palmetto bugs, for instance. A palmetto bug is a cockroach that has been to the gym and gotten seriously buffed. A palmetto bug would eat Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua for breakfast.

I was a teenager the year my mother had us trim the tree with napkin rings, and so I must confess that I had far more pressing concerns than whether her once impeccable sense of style had disappeared completely under the sweltering South Florida sun. Sure, there were other indications that her emotional stability was a bit precarious: She spray-painted the antique wooden furniture in her and my father’s bedroom silver. She glued seashells to a toilet seat — new, not used — and called it a wreath. And she randomly tossed some of the hollow ornaments that normally would have been on the tree into our modest swimming pool, clogging the filter and making it very difficult to swim laps.

My point? It wouldn’t have taken Dr. Phil to see that my mother had, well, issues that Christmas.

Nevertheless, our first tannenbaum in the tropics was cheerful and bright. Arguably, a fake tree with napkin rings was a no more inappropriate way to celebrate Christmas than by lionizing a reindeer with a radiation warning light for a nose. This was years before the Disney movie, “The Little Mermaid,” was released, but in my memory that pink tree looks like an undersea mountain with Sebastian and Scuttle and Flounder swimming by.

In subsequent years — even when we were continuing to live in Florida — my mother would revert to more traditional ornaments. There would be tinsel and garland and porcelain angels. No tropical fish. No napkin rings. She had the silver stripped from the bedroom furniture. Never again did her seashell wreath made from a toilet seat appear on our front door.

Those more sensible trees most definitely had their charm. But if you want to make a statement with your tree — send a mayday to your family that you’re sinking fast this holiday season and about to go down for the third time — there may be no better way than with a pink tree and a few hundred napkin rings.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 10, 2006.)

Here's how quickly a life can unravel: On any given day in the early spring of 2001, the biggest problem in Michael Hutchins' life was that he was an otherwise reasonably hip teenager who couldn't get the music from "It's a Small World" out of his head. By the end of the year, he was living out of cardboard boxes in the homes of acquaintances, while downing ecstasy, crystal meth and Special K -- the street name for a tranquillizer administered on humans and pets. He went from running the rides at Disney World's Magic Kingdom -- Peter Pan's Flight, Cinderella's Carousel, and the gently bobbing boats and gyrating puppets of Small World -- to overdosing outside the Orlando nightclub where he was working after he left Disney. It would not be the last time he would be hospitalized following an overdose.

Hutchins, 24, is now the residential manager for the Murray Street Coop run by Burlington's Spectrum Youth and Family Services. That means he's one of the adults responsible for the half-dozen male teenagers who live there while transitioning from foster care to independent living. Like Hutchins, those teens have been in trouble. Also, like Hutchins, many have battled depression.

"Sometimes they'll say to me, 'You don't understand what this is like,' and I tell them, 'Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do,'" Hutchins says.

Today Hutchins is an affable, aspiring social worker with a fine tenor voice. He steers clear of caffeine as well as drugs, and starts school next month at the Community College of Vermont. The picaresque that brought him to Spectrum is at once familiar and deeply idiosyncratic.

He grew up in the Northeast Kingdom, in Lyndonville, and recalls being physically abused by his biologic mother, a young woman who had her own battles with addictions and mental illness. Eventually, he would be adopted by parents he loves deeply. When things were looking up for Hutchins as an adolescent -- he was part of the national touring company of the musical outreach program, "Up with People" -- he experienced a string of bad luck and made some seriously bad choices. The tour of "Up with People" was canceled while he was in Boston. He wasn't interested yet in college, however, and so he accepted the job at Disney World. There, he says, he was caught by his manager while smoking a cigarette in the park when he wasn't on break, and fired.

He wound up bunking for weeks at a time with different acquaintances in Orlando, while juggling jobs at a nightclub and an International House of Pancakes. One morning when he woke up in the lounge of the nightclub, a manager suggested they go to a birthday party together.

"It was 7 in the morning, and I thought it was kind of strange to be going to a party," Hutchins recalls, "but I was sleepy and feeling a little fuzzy, and so I went." At that party, he experimented with drugs for the first time. Within weeks, the experiment had grown into an addiction.

What saved him? After he overdosed, his adoptive family brought him back to Vermont and took him to Spectrum. There he lived first at the group's shelter, and then, when he was ready, in his own room at Spectrum's Maple Street residence. For two years, Spectrum counselors worked with him, helping him to steer clear of drugs, to get a job, and ultimately to find an apartment independent of the organization. He would relapse once early into the program, downing two full bottles of Robitussin in 24 hours, and winding up so high that he couldn't feel his legs and thought he was floating. For the second -- and last -- time, he would be hospitalized as a result of drug abuse.

But he would get through that, too.

And when he was ready to leave Spectrum, he realized that his aspirations had changed: "Once, I thought I wanted to be the next 'American Idol.' Now I want to work with teens. Spectrum helps the kids on the street that most people ignore. We give a chance to those young adults who really, really need one."

This Christmas Eve, Hutchins will be at his desk at the Murray Street Coop. When the teen boys there have gone to sleep, he will be all alone. His main responsibility then? "I'll be their Santa and put the presents under the tree. I'm really looking forward to it."

Most Disney characters have stories that eventually reach a happy ending. Sure, the deer's mother will have to die first; invariably, the princess will indeed bite into the poisoned apple. But, eventually, the young fish will find his dad and the children will come of age and learn what matters in this world.

Hutchins' tale isn't quite over yet. But it looks this holiday season as if the guy who once ran the rides in Orlando is on the verge of a much-deserved storybook ending.

* * *

If you want to learn more about how you can help Spectrum, either financially or as a volunteer, call 864-7423 or e-mail the organization at info@spectrumvt.org.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 17, 2006.)

Sometimes, when I think of a bookstore, I envision more than the books. I think this is true for many people. After all, we have a totemic relationship with pulp and ink that transcends our relationship with (for example) clothing or cutlery or shampoo -- items we are likely to purchase at other kinds of stores. We know where we were when we first read "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Johnny Tremain," and the image on the cover or the words on the side can instantly catapult us back in time. We don't merely remember the plot or the dialogue: We remember who we were, where we were, and, perhaps, the state of our families and friends when we first cracked the book's spine.

It's similar to our relationship with music, and the highly personal, deeply idiosyncratic images that specific songs conjure for most of us. In other words, a good bookstore -- like a good library -- is far more than a mere roomful of books.

Deerleap Books, a good bookstore in Bristol, will close at the end of this week on Saturday. In Deerleap's bay window, the front of the store where books once were displayed face-out on vertical stands, is a tremendous sign with bold red letters: STORE CLOSING SALE!

It's not merely the books I will miss when the doors shut for the last time. It's the memories. When I think of Deerleap, instantly in my mind it is 1997 and one of the storeowners' three daughters -- at the time an elementary school student, now a young woman in her first year at college -- is giving my even younger daughter piggyback rides around the shop. Not just the children's section: The entire store. I recall a reading I once gave there in 1995 for six incredibly kind folks (John and Rita Elder, Peter and Ann Straub, Alice Leeds, and Rick Ceballos), as well as a reading I gave there in 1997 for well over a hundred people.

Mostly, however, when I think of the store, I think of the children's section and the way it marked my daughter's inexorable transformation from toddler to child to adolescent.

Deerleap first opened in 1990, a labor of love managed by Cheryl Eling. Tom and Carol Wells bought it in 1996. My daughter was born in 1993. In a family history, the dates are all-important.

The other day I stood wistfully in the Deerleap children's section in the same way I once stood in my daughter's kindergarten classroom on the last morning she was a kindergartner, or the way I toured the whole elementary school on her final afternoon as a sixth-grader. I studied the store's painted walls with their vibrant jungle motif and spied Curious George. I knelt before the tiny table with its two tiny chairs. All I had to do to evoke instantly my daughter at any age was see the names on the spines of the books. Lois Lowry, the author behind Anastasia Krupnik; Barbara Park, the creator of Junie B. Jones; or Kevin Henke, who gave us Lilly and Owen and Wendell. Each book represented a different phase in my daughter's life, and a different series of reminiscences.

If I had a son, of course, the litany might be different, but no less meaningful. Such is the power of pulp, even now in the digital age.

While my first reaction to the store closing was an ornery combination of sadness and frustration -- How, I thought to myself, could Bristol have supported two video stores for most of the decade and a half that Deerleap was around, but not a single bookstore? -- I have come now simply to appreciate the remarkable blessing that we had a bookstore at all for most of my daughter's childhood. That was a great gift that Tom and Carol gave us.

And so when Deerleap is gone a week from now, I will walk past the storefront and remind myself -- and anyone else I should happen to meet -- of a quote from Theodor Geisel, a.k.a., Dr. Seuss: "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 24, 2006.)