"HEY MEL, THIS IS JESSE"

About a year and a half ago, my brother-in-law, Jesse Young passed away. He was my sister Jeanne's husband. They live in Mesa, Arizona, but they used to live in El Paso, fairly close to my house.

On occasion, Jesse would call over to the house and he would almost always say, "Hey Mel, this is Jesse," for his initial response to my answering the phone. I know everyone has his or her own unique voice, some more unusual than others and Jesse's voice was no exception. Whenever I heard his voice,I immediately knew who it was even before he said his name.

Well, about 9 months ago, and about 9 months after Jesse passed away I was at work and I happened to be in the front office doing a little paperwork. At work, we almost always answer the work phones out in the warehouse because it's usually our home office in Ohio asking us to adjust an order in one way or another and the orders are near the warehouse phone. Well, on this particular morning, the phone rang and I kept waiting for someone to answer it, but for some reason but no one did. So after about 4 rings I reached over and picked up the phone and said, " LADD Industries, may I help you?" To which I heard on the other end of the phone,

"Hey Mel, this is Jesse".

Holy Crap!!

It was the voice of my brother-in-law who isn't with us anymore. I stammered for a second and then came back to earth realizing it was a guy from our office in Ohio named Jesse Avery. I started to laugh and then told him why I was laughing, to which he said he was sorry for my loss. I told him it was all right, that it was just that first instant of me hearing that term coming from a voice that sounded just like Jesse Young that kind of unraveled me for a second or two.

I told the story to a couple of people at work that day and we got a laugh out of it and later when I went home I told Debby, too. She also got a kick out of it. After about a week or so of debating whether I should or shouldn't, I decided to tell my sister Jeanne about it. She was cool about it and thought it was pretty funny, too, so I told here I was going to have Jesse Avery call her one day, out of the blue, so she could decide for herself if the voice sounded like her Jesse. She said she'd love to give it a try.

I gave it about a month and then one day called Ohio and asked Jesse Avery if he'd do me a favor and call my sister in Arizona, just to see what kind of reaction I'd get. He said he'd do it, so I gave him a small script and told him her cell number and what time to call. I wanted him to leave a message on her phone while she was at work, so that she couldn't see the phone number when she first heard it ring. Jeanne's pretty smart and I figured she might have been able to figure it out if she saw a phone number from an area code she didn't recognize.

Long story short, he called and about 5 minutes after 5pm in Arizona I got a phone call. She said something like, " It didn't sound too much like him. I knew it wasn't Jesse but it was kind of fun."

Now, anytime I speak to or email Jesse Avery at work, we always refer to each other as Brother-in-law or Bro.

If you didn't like this story, blame Debby. She's the one who wanted me to tell it.

"Hey Mel, this is Jesse"