“I am mad as hell,” said the Curmudgeon as he walked into the dark interior (Storekeep was changing the overhead fluorescent lights) of the General Store, his complexion edging up to the danger point as, apparently, his blood pressure moved into the realm of the higher digit.
“What about?” asked Storekeep, his voice coming from above with the tone of a message from a big empty room.
“Telephones!”
“Any particular part of the telephone industry?” asked the young lady who occasionally arrives from Ashville to sort the small collection of greeting cards.
“ROBOCALLS,” answered Curmudgeon with a response of capital letters.
“Let me describe a typical day on my phone. It all begins with a tingle as I am making my morning toast. I complete the act of buttering then pick up the kitchen receiver to hear the following message:
“Hello!” says a bright and chipper woman’s voice, “I’m calling you about your credit card debt. Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t about your present debt but is about the interest rate you pay. For the following week we are able to offer you a great deduction in the interest rate that you now pay with you current card’s bank—”
“I hung up!”
“Never do that,” said the man delivering cold cuts, “If you hang up the powers that be immediately know that your phone is active. Better put the receiver down in a convenient place and go about your business until you hear that irritating message from the phone company. You know the one I mean, it’s that high-pitched woman’s voice that says: ‘If you want to make a call please hang up and try again.’”
“I hate that voice,” said Storekeep from above.
“We all do,” said greeting card lady.
“So what happened next?” asked the man from the cold-cut-case.
“The phone rang again,” continued the Curmudgeon, “but this time the call was from a security company from Texas that wanted me to join with my local police department in an attempt to rein in the crime element of Western North Carolina, by my installing a burglar alarm system, again approved by the local police, that would protect me from an army of evil robots hell bent on stealing all things of value.
“The man’s voice, full of vibrato, then told me to press the one button on my phone to let them know I would be ready to receive this special equipment or if I had no interest in the offer, press three.”
“What happened?” asked the card lady.
“Upon pressing the three button the line went dead and before I could move the receiver away from my ear, the irritating phone voice said: ‘If you want to make a call please hang up and try again.’”
“So,” continued the Curmudgeon, “I moved ahead with my breakfast and while doing the dishes, the phone rang again, this time with a “Life Alert Emergency Pager” to enable me to survive a bad fall from tripping over a forgotten electric cord.”
“I began to yell at the phone, completely forgetting that the other end of the line was a computer with nothing to offer except a waste of my time. I really don’t need an emergency alert anything because my next-door neighbor, you know which ever one of the Perry Sisters who is at home at the time, is aware of every move on my part and would never allow my body to be unattended for any length of time.”
They all knew the Perry Sisters.
“Perhaps,” said the voice of Storekeep, still above them all as he continued to work the lights, “you should get call-waiting or install an answering machine and never answer the phone except on time-arranged signals?”
“I think,” said Curmudgeon, “I have no wish to pay the phone company any more than I do, so I’ll hook up that old get an answering machine I have that I put in the closet years ago.”
“Civilization marches on,” said the card lady from Asheville.
Peter Loewer has written and illustrated more than twenty-five books on natural history over the past thirty years.
