“A month or so ago I marched in here and said that I was as mad as hell,” said the Curmudgeon as he walked into the General Store, and as often is the case when anger takes hold of his psyche, his complexion began to get highlights of pink and his eyebrows started to wiggle about like free-ranging caterpillars.
“What about this time?” asked Storekeep.
“Telephones!”
“Any particular member of the great telephone industry?” asked Mrs. Storekeep who was tidying up the already beginning to be mauled Hostess Twinkies, now back in service to salute the thickening waistline of most Americans.
“It’s still about—how do I begin? Well, let’s start with your imagining that your phone chooses to ring at the same time you are four rooms away, trying to use the vacuum cleaner to restore a bit of couth to your living room rug, while you struggle to pull the vacuum—I admit—by the cord, over the hump of a smaller rug that covers the floor area where my wife’s cousin—you know her, Ethyl Roman from Cinci, who gave us the rug many years ago when we moved here from Knoxville—spilled a small bottle of India ink on the floor—” he paused for breath— “and you soon learn that finally retrieving the phone, there is nobody at the other end except a lot of office noise and distant voices never loud enough to hear properly—so you hold on and wait.”
“How long?” asked Cityfella, who had come down to the store for his reserved copy of The New York Times—now often in short supply since it ran the great editorial about the continued fall of North Carolina.
“I looked at my watch just to make sure,” replied Curmudgeon, “of how much time I would be forced to wait until the ditzy person on the other end realized there was a sucker on the line. I actually counted two minutes. Then I heard a voice in my ear that asked ‘Are you the owner of this business that I am talking to?’”
“Don’t you know?” I asked her.
“‘Well, how should I know until you tell me?’ she answered.”
“Well,” I said, “I would assume that since you are making this call and you actually have my number on a screen in front of you, that you should know who I am.”
“‘I called,” she said, her voice now charged with steely dignity, ‘to tell you that it’s imperative that you act right now to lock down this latest low-interest loan to protect yourself from future cost increases.’”
“What card do you represent?” I asked.
Silence on the line.
“So I asked if she was calling from Rumania or perhaps the suburbs of Peschkatonia—I think it’s in southern—”
“At this point she raised her voice and said: ‘Well, I never—’”
“‘No, I doubt it—’ I said and hung up.”
“No, never do that,” said Mrs. Storekeep.
“I don’t remember, but I thought there was a good reason.”
“So what do I do?” asked Curmudgeon.
“Go for a walk,” said Cityfella, “and forget the rude awakenings of American commerce in the 21st Century.”
“Call waiting,” said Storekeep.
“Where,” said Curmudgeon, “I don’t have a phone in my hand.”
“Not here,” said Mrs. Storekeep, “if you use the call waiting service you can see who is calling—”
“And what if I don’t know the number? So I will be forced to add another level of service to the already rising costs of having a telephone in today’s Wonder World of Commerce?”
“Don’t answer,” said Cityfella. “Just let it ring until the Robot gets tired of holding the line.”
“It’s a Robot?” asked Curmudgeon.
“Forget it,” said Cityfella, “I’m going for a walk.”
Peter Loewer has written and illustrated more than twenty-five books on natural history over the past thirty years.