[1036] in Humor
HUMOR (Dave): Dave Visits with the Electric Company
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Tue Aug 29 17:54:42 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 17:48:08 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 95 15:08:31 EST
From: pug@MIT.EDU (Sharalee M. Field)
Subject: HUMOR: Temper, Temper - Dave Barry
[Forwards deleted]
DAVE BARRY
RECENTLY I WAS in my office, with a lot to do, including write a column,
when I
got a phone call informing me that the electric company had cut off my
power.
Years ago, I would have responded to this petty annoyance with a pointless,
immature outburst of anger. But since then I have learned that stress
management is vital to health. So I hung up the phone, took a deep breath,
exhaled slowly, then punched my desk so hard that I could not make a fist
for
three days.
Then, using my other hand, I called the electric company, which has one of
those automatic call-routing systems, designed by escaped Nazis with the aid
of
the Educational Testing Service, wherein you must use your touch-tone phone
to
pass a lengthy multiple-choice test ("... if you
know your first name but not your last name, press ..."). This is the
electric
company's way of testing your worthiness as a customer; it's similar to the
way
knights of old had to prove themselves by slaying dragons, except that
instead
of winning the hand of a fair maiden, you get put in line to speak with an
actual Customer Service Representative.
While waiting, I kept my stress level down by calmly going over the points I
planned to make, as follows:
1. You stupid idiots.
2. Give me back my electricity this instant.
3. What are you people using for brains?
4. Pez?
While I was refining these points, a Customer Service Representative came on
the line and immediately irritated me by--I believe this was a deliberate
tactic on her part --being polite. She explained to me that my electricity
had
been turned off because--get a load of this excuse--I had not paid my bill.
I was furious. The only thing that prevented me from hiring the entire O.J.
Simpson defense team and suing the electric company for every last volt it
owns
was the realization that I had not, in fact, paid my electric bill. You know
how you sometimes make a pile of papers that you Definitely Have to Get to
Soon, and then you avoid making eye contact with the pile for several weeks,
secretly hoping--you crazy optimist--that a giant comet will strike the
Earth
and wipe out all human life and you won't have to deal with it? My electric
bill was in a pile like that.
The irritatingly polite woman told me that they could turn my electricity
back
on that day, but only if I paid the bill in person before 2 p.m. She told me
to
pay at a drugstore near where I live. (I don't know why she didn't have me
pay
at the electric company; probably they don't want anybody to find out their
secret method for generating electricity, which I suspect involves a carpet
being scuffed by a giant pair of mechanized shoes.)
So I had to rush home to get my electric bill, and naturally my car chose
that
exact moment to be low on gas, so I had to stop at one of those all-purpose
gas
stations that also sell beer, cigarettes, magazines, hats, beef jerky and
hot
dogs the same age as Strom Thurmond. Naturally I wound up standing in line
behind some moron who was investing his family's grocery money in some kind
of
state lottery transaction so complex as to require the full attention of all
three store clerks for about 15 minutes, during which time I controlled my
stress level by staring laser holes into the back of the moron's neck and
shrieking silently, inside my head, why not save yourself some time? Why not
just set your money on fire?
So as you can imagine I was feeling very nonstressed when, with 2 p.m.
rapidly
approaching, I finally got back out onto the highway and immediately got
stuck
in severe traffic behind a driver with ears the size of pie plates who had
just
this moment arrived here from the year 1937 and had therefore never seen a
left-turn arrow. You could see him studying it, trying to figure it out--A
green arrow! Pointing left! Here in the left-hand lane! Whatever could it
mean? --while those of us behind him controlled our stress levels by
pounding
our horns and then yelping with pain because we had accidentally used the
same
hand that we had used, in an earlier stress-control effort, to punch our
desk.
Finally, with only minutes to go, I got to the drugstore--a cramped and
dingy
place selling unattractive housewares on lay-away --and found myself at the
end
of a long, Soviet-style line of people paying their utility bills in cash,
which they pulled out of their wallets one dollar at a time in slow motion,
pretending that they couldn't hear my brain shrieking at them hurry up you
fools but of course they knew exactly what they were doing because they were
all part of the plot, along with the electric company and the big-eared
driver
and the lottery moron and the black federal helicopters constantly
monitoring
my movements, all of them working together to raise my stress level but I
know
what they're trying to do and it's not going to work hahahahahahahahaha hey
get
away from me you ... Editor's Note: There will be no Dave Barry column this
week. Dave is taking the week off.
