Dear Mr. Fairbank

Posted on February 2, 2007 by onesanevoice

This letter was sent to the Chairman and CEO of Capital One Bank on February 15th.  All employee names have been changed to protect the helpful but ineffective.  Should a response arrive I will print it.

Mr. Richard Fairbank
Chairman and CEO
Capital One Bank
General Correspondence
P.O. Box 30285
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0285

Dear Mr. Fairbank,

This is to tell you why you are losing a long-standing customer.

On January 26th, I called Capital One in response to a letter I received regarding my Capital One Visa card being switched to a No Hassle Cash Visa.  I asked the rep, Andrea, if it was advisable for me to also have a new card number issued in light of the recently publicized security breach at a major discount shopping chain.  She said she would check.  She put me on hold and came back to tell me as per my request my card had been canceled and a new one ordered.  I should have it in 14 business days.  Now welcome to my nightmare.

My card had not been affected by the security breach.  I told Andrea to un-cancel my card as it was my only credit card and I could not be without one for two weeks and I never requested its cancellation.  She said that was not possible to do but she apologized for the misunderstanding.  After more conversation she agreed to consult a supervisor.  She then informed me that even though it wasn’t their policy, they would send a new card out that day by UPS (Friday, January 26th) and it would arrive January 31st but I would have to be home to sign for it.  I rearranged my day to be at home all afternoon for UPS.  It did not come.

I called Capital One January 31st and spoke to Tim who was also very nice and apologetic.  He consulted the computer and reported that for some reason the UPS field kicked out the request.  I asked why no one called me.  He said no one knew.  They thought the card was on its way.  But he was sending one out IMMEDIATELY by UPS and promised it would arrive on February 5th and again reiterated that I would have to sign for it.  I rearranged my day to be at home all afternoon for UPS.  It did not come February 5th.

I called Capital One February 5th and spoke to Jeremy who was even nicer and more apologetic than Tim, if that’s even possible, and he said the system showed that UPS kicked out the request again so it looked as if a card had been sent by regular mail.  I should get it February 7th.  He said if it did not arrive on the 7th to call and ask for a supervisor and an emergency card would be sent to me overnight.  I asked why this had not been done on January 26th when my card was erroneously canceled and he said it should have been.

I called Capital One on February 7th when no card arrived and spoke to a supervisor named James who was even nicer and more apologetic than Jeremy, if that’s even possible.  He said a card had definitely been sent, either by UPS or mail, possibly both, and I should get it Monday or Tuesday, February 12th or 13th.  Today is the 13th.  Nothing came.  I called Capital One again today and spoke to Les, a supervisor who was even nicer and more apologetic than James, if that’s even possible.  He said there have been major problems with getting cards out to customers by UPS and I really should be getting it so soon I can almost be using it.

I sent something to my son in another state by UPS three days ago and he got it today.  He didn’t even need it as badly as I need my canceled credit card.  And I don’t spend nearly as much on advertising what a terrific mother I am as you people do telling us what a great credit card program you are.  Today I also gave my dentist a check for $1,100 that I normally would have charged on your card which made him ask me why the check.  When I told him this story he said, “Wow, my wife’s American Express card needed to be replaced and they got one to her overnight.”

The next time a barbarian asks me what’s in my wallet I can promise it won’t be you.

Yours very truly,

OneSaneVoice
Abused former cardholder

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Dropping Like Cyber Flies

Posted on February 1, 2007 by onesanevoice

I began blogging here about four months ago, October 2006 according to my Quick Blog administration page.  A friend and former colleague helped me set up this site in her office one day during some down time and since neither of us had ever created a blog before and we didn’t value one domain host over another we picked the one with the name we liked best.  Since this post involves the people I get this space through and they would be the last entity on the planet I would want to piss off I will refer to them as their parallel world opposite.

StopMommy.com has made blogging so user friendly even a department store mannequin could do it.  After posting a few entries and getting positive feedback I mentioned to Daughter on the phone that I wondered how many times my site had been accessed and how much I would love to find out that information.  She said, “Are you suggesting you’d like to manage your statistics?”  Part of me feared I wouldn’t be up to the challenge and part of me thought, “Yeah! Give me that scalpel and show me where the spleen is!” and since there is no better man than I, Gunga Din, I asked her for instructions.  “Are you on the site?” she asked me.  “Click on the tab that says Manage Statistics.”  Never have I gotten a quicker return on an investment than I did right then on Daughter’s expensive Boston education.

Monitoring my hits became a ritual just this side of obsession.  I could tell when new people visited my page versus regular readers looking in again.  When I reported the numbers to Daughter a few weeks later she was encouraging.  “Very respectable, Mom.  People are coming back and also referring you to friends.  Keep up the good work.”  I felt like Sally Field at the Oscars.

Then today I logged on and clicked that familiar tab and squinted my eyes in disbelief.  Half of my hits were gone.  I mean, really, the number that had been climbing steadily was diminished to half the size it was yesterday.  I logged off and then back on again dwelling in the idiotic possibility that I had gone on someone else’s site by mistake.  With my user name and password?  That would be the equivalent of putting your card in the ATM and finding yourself in another person’s account.  A poor person.  After realizing that can’t possibly be the case you’d have to look around the empty vault and wonder where the hell is my money?

I emailed StopMommy support but was feeling the kind of panic that can only be soothed by a human voice.  They would want to talk to me anyway since the message I sent them must have sounded like the cries at the Hindenburg disaster.  As the phone kept ringing I clicked on the tab again and 60 more hits had vanished.  COME BACK!  I paced the kitchen glued to my cell phone forgetting the boiled eggs on the burner hardening to the density of golf balls.  Finally a rep picked up and glanced over my account.  “Oh, look,” he said genially, “I’ve been hoping to find one sane voice all my life and here you are.”  “Yes, here I am,” I replied tightly, wondering if he had family living close enough for me to torture.

He put me on hold for 12 minutes at the start of which I was instructed to press # if I didn’t want to hear their music while I waited.  I pounded # and the music poured out at full high decibel static second only to the noise in my head for sheer volume.  He came back and good-naturedly informed me that the technical department said they update the statistics regularly and that’s why the numbers changed.  We went over the varying meanings of ‘up’ and ‘down’ and how none of this explained why my numbers were going south.  He put me on hold for another 14 minutes of melody during which time I clicked on my statistics again and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  My hits were disappearing like anorexic models at Fashion Week.

When the rep returned (by this time I had to plug in my cell phone and was standing hunched over the outlet) he informed me that the tech department was working on the Quick Blog sites for the past three months (?) which might wreak havoc on my record of hits and I should have gotten an email to that effect.  I told him I may not be the most observant person in the world but I certainly would have taken notice of an email from my domain host announcing A NEW VERSION OF HELL.  He said to check my mail.

The only StopMommy mail is a Customer Satisfaction Survey.  There are no new hits.  The hits I had went away.  You’re all gone and I don’t know who I’m talking to.  I can hear my voice echo.  I’m afraid to check my statistics again.  What comes before zero?

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Goes Down Easy at a Bargain Price

Posted on January 27, 2007 by onesanevoice

Swiss Miss makes an awesome hot cocoa mix in the box marked Marshmallow Lovers Fat Free with Calcium.  The box is huge, much bigger than the others on the shelf and since I tend to buy things before fully knowing what they’re about I figured there must be twenty packs of hot cocoa inside.  There are in fact eight packets consisting of two pouches each, the cocoa mix and marshmallows remaining segregated for purely theatrical purposes.  The effort required to prepare the beverage with all the packet ripping and water pouring easily burns off the 70 calories you’ll be consuming so it’s really all win here.  There are fewer preservatives listed than I’ve seen on other brands but still enough to ensure the same shelf life as plutonium.  Check it out.

This health conscious choice might lead you to believe that I am the individual you want preparing your daily meal plan.  That would be a mistake.  I was raised in a family that didn’t necessarily consider turkey a Thanksgiving staple.  The first year I brought Husband to my parents’ for the holiday he was adorable and eager to be accepted and totally confused when my father dropped a Chinese take-out menu in his lap and asked for his order.  As he stared at it my then teenage daughter leaned in to him and said, “Don’t look too hard for the turkey lo mein.  Welcome to the family.”

By this time Husband had already endured a painful introduction to my minimal dining standards.  A soft-spoken social worker, community service executive and adjunct college instructor, he had so far taken me to several lovely, upscale restaurants.  One night we were running late for a movie and he asked me to make a suggestion for a quick meal.  The directions I provided brought us to the entrance of a place Husband had only visited once or twice before – a place called Taco Bell – and as he began to gamely pull into a parking spot I glanced at my watch and said the drive-thru was a better idea.  For him this was uncharted territory.

I always thought shouting a food order into an outdoor speaker was a universal tendency Americans were born with but as we sat in his car next to the microphone with his window tightly shut I learned otherwise.  He was totally out of his element here, that element being the world of eating decent food indoors.  Cars were pulling up behind us so I gently urged him to roll down his window and order me a Big Beef Burrito Supreme and something for himself.  The voice from the electronic box instructed him to proceed to the next window.  When we arrived there the employee requested $9.50.  Husband took out a ten and asked for the food.  “Next window.  $9.50, please,” the teen responded.  My husband looked at me like what kind of racket is this?  He turned to the kid at the window and said, “Oh, no, first you give me the food.”

The family in the Explorer behind us gave a little honk.  This could get ugly, I thought, who knows when those SUV occupants ate last?  I told Husband it was okay, they would give us the food at the next window.  He looked out the front windshield and shook his head.  No, he’d seen scams before and this fit the profile.  Once they have our money who’s to say they’ll care about feeding us?  Shit, they won’t have to, that family will eat us.  “GIVE HIM THE MONEY!” I shouted in the most fetching I-swear-I’m-not-a-psycho voice the circumstances would allow which prompted him to stuff the $10 bill through the window and gun the engine propelling us to the next window like we were in a getaway car.

I don’t remember what Husband ordered that night or what movie we saw but I do know none of this prevented him from proposing to me a few months later although it may provide a clue as to why we haven’t been to a drive-thru in the seven years since.  And to all those readers who might have been misled about this entry based on the title, shame on you.  You are my kind of people.

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Familiar Strangers and Others

Posted on January 22, 2007 by onesanevoice

Today as I was waiting for the light to change on the way out of my neighborhood, there appeared in the sky in front of me a flock of geese flying in that perfect V formation with precision spacing between each bird that can only be primordially determined.  There was a Barry White song playing on the radio and just as he hit the chorus, the place where his voice does that soulful sexy throb, the entire formation dipped to the right.  It was so unexpected it made me gasp.  Boy, do I live for the unexpected.

I think the longer we’re on the planet the more we hope we still surprise people.  I love when people tell me I’m different from the way they thought I would be.  We can all be such prisoners of our preconceptions that there’s something freeing about discovering we’re not at all the way someone first imagined us.  At one of my high school reunions a woman walked by me who I recognized right away and greeted by name.  She seemed shocked that I knew her and said so.  I was shocked that she was shocked and I asked her why she reacted like that.  She said, “You were one of the smart kids.  You were a class officer.  You always sat in the front row and raised your hand with the answer.  I didn’t think you noticed any of the people who sat in the back of the room.”  I was stunned.  When I told her I was just passing time answering questions waiting for the bell to ring so I could go smoke in the girls’ room it was her turn to be stunned.  Someone else that night remembered me as being athletic because I spent an entire semester senior year running the track at lunchtime.  Yeah, that would be because I had cut gym since 10th grade and couldn’t graduate unless I made up the time.  My best friend would meet me behind the scoreboard with a pack of Newports.  Then I’d begin my pole-vaulting practice.  Remember?

Generally, people seem to perceive me as classy but that’s only because they haven’t seen me eating cold Chinese food over the sink in my underwear.  The first time I can recall coming up against someone’s perception of me was in the sixth grade.  My family had just moved from the Brooklyn housing projects to Westchester County and it was the beginning of the school year with me being the new kid.  We were standing on the playground at recess and one of the girls was saying she knew a boy who said he did something but she didn’t think most of the other kids would know what it meant.  Everyone was pleading with her to say what it was but she wouldn’t divulge it.  She said it was too advanced.  Then her eyes came to rest on me and she said, “You’re from the city.  I bet you know.”  She came close and cupped her hands on either side of her mouth so no one could see her lips move.  The she pressed them against my ear and said, “Fuck.”

What?  Why is she telling me this?  Because I’m from Brooklyn?  Is that where people fuck?  Or that the people there so relentlessly talk about fucking that I couldn’t help but overhear?  And more importantly, am I absolutely certain of my facts?  Is it really what I think it is?  Could I be misinformed?  And what’s with all these other kids?  Are they Mormons?  WHERE AM I?

Pretty much Hooterville as it turned out, a town with an annual Grange Fair where you could see a sheep shearing demonstration.  Or sit on the roof of the junior high school and watch the Fireman’s Carnival Fourth of July display.  A town with one movie theater that changed features once a week where your high school quarterback was the usher.  One day in my junior year I went on some errands in town and noticed the movie marquee announcing “Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” was showing and I figured it sounded like fun.  I went in and saw it and loved it so much that after it was over I decided to stay and see it again if only for the Oompah Loompahs.  The lights went up and when the quarterback started checking the rows for debris he saw me sitting on the aisle.  He greeted me and we chatted for a while about how cool the movie was and I said I was seeing it again.  He looked around and asked, “Who are you here with?”  I said nobody.  He persisted.  “No, I mean are you with your niece or something or you’re babysitting?”  I assured him I was alone.  “And you’re seeing it again?” he asked.  When I responded yes he leaned in closer so no one in the empty theater could overhear.  And in a whisper reminiscent of my sixth grade playground days he said, “Are you stoned?”

I couldn’t believe he asked me that.  Everyone knows I’m an athlete.

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It Only Turned My Eyeballs Inside Out

Posted on January 17, 2007 by onesanevoice

When my husband met me seven years ago I could sleep like it was my job.  In our early dating days he knew not to call me before 11:00 in the morning on weekends.  He would suggest how romantic it would be to come get me at 5am and we could watch the sun come up together.  Before long he realized he had a better shot with Ernest Hemingway for whom we all know the sun also rises.

When women in my age group (early forties to early fifties) get together the first thing one of them says is, “Anyone sleeping?” and the second thing is, “No, me neither.”  As far as the hormonal changes that occur at this time in a woman’s life, hot flashes and mood swings get all the press.  But for the actual women it’s the sleep thing.  It’s as if a basic feature has been deleted from our program and turned against us, as if chocolate suddenly made you hurl.  This is the club I now belong to and we are united in our zombiedom.  I don’t know if the guys with erectile dysfunction feel this same kinship but I do know we’re all getting their junk emails.

Please save me.  This is what I pleaded when I met with my doctor two years ago.  He’s a wonderful and responsive practitioner who also happens to be an Orthodox Jew who has given me many annual, thorough physicals without ever once seeing me naked.  Don’t ask me how this is possible just believe that it’s true.  Forget about needing a nurse present in the room.  He answers to a higher authority.  In response to my misery, what he saved me with was Ambien proving once again that where human beings struggle pharmaceutical companies soar.

The Ambien worked well for many nights and then it started to lag.  A friend suggested trying the Ambien CR Extended Release tabs.  But it seemed to me like hmmm, should I take the LSD or the maximum strength LSD?  I mean how far into the earth’s core do you need to descend?  (This is a purely speculative analogy on my part having never, ever dropped acid and I swear that on Timothy Leary’s grave.  My kids read this blog.)  I asked my doctor if he would prescribe some Lunesta for me since I liked the friendly butterfly on the TV commercial but he said he’d rather I try Rozerem.  So instead of soft butterflies I got crazy monkeys.

This is what happened last night:  I took the Rozerem 30 minutes before bedtime as prescribed.  This would be right after the Season Encore of The Closer, not to be confused with one of TNT’s Instant Classics, a movie released six months ago and coming up on its fiftieth TNT showing, Instant Classic being my least favorite modern catchphrase after Starter Marriage.

Fairly soon I began to drift into what felt like an anesthetized state like when the doctor taking your wisdom teeth out or giving you a colonoscopy says to count backwards from ten and your face feels like liquid at nine.  Except I didn’t actually sleep, I just had these episodic nightmares, let’s call them fugues because why not?  In the first one I was running on a street in what seemed like my neighborhood except a car was bearing down on me from behind and I wasn’t so much running as slogging through oatmeal in weighted shoes.  I could see the headlights illuminating the road in front of me and I could feel the blood pounding in my ears as the car got closer and my feet heavier.  Terrified, I bolted upright in bed.  But I still felt groggy so I lay back down.  Next I was walking toward my front door when I looked up and caught the reflection of a stranger coming up behind me holding a rock with both hands aimed at my head.  Now I shot awake and jumped out of bed.  My legs felt wobbly, my hands were tingling and I reached into my parched mouth to pull out the wool sock only to discover it was my tongue.  Shit, I thought, I need water so I staggered into the bathroom and nearly chipped my tooth on the faucet because God forbid I could find the cup in the dark and if I turned the lights on I would see the snakes in my hair.  Shit shit shit shit shit.

I grabbed the bottle of pills and lurched down the steps to the kitchen garbage where I fished out that information sheet CVS sends along with its prescriptions, the one with the scary warnings that I never read because we all have to die of something, right?  I was looking for the section where it goes can cause dizziness, headache, constipation, psychotic breaks but all the words just ran together so I opened the bottle and poured those little monsters into the garbage on top of the Trader Joe coffee grounds so I couldn’t change my mind later thinking maybe they weren’t so bad.  Then I sat down and wrote this entry because it’s the middle of the night and do all you children know where your mothers are?

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‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

Posted on January 12, 2007 by onesanevoice

We eat so much raw fish at the local sushi place that they give us a Valuable Customer gift each Christmas, a bottle of sake in a festive box always presented with great fanfare and a specialty roll on the house.  It’s a family-run restaurant and they have seen us together as a family more than most of our family has and it is them we will have to thank when our bodies lie fluorescent with mercury poisoning way before our time which you may think will not be worth it but you haven’t tasted their tuna tataki.

I lost a crown this week and my dentist is on vacation and it hurts so I’m way into the sake right now.  It’s also kind of a trailer trash sensation (no offense if you’re reading this from your trailer) to be able to stick my tongue through a hole in my gum that leads right up to my brain and even though it can’t be detected by the public at large it still makes me feel like I should be standing on line at some Appalachian food bank holding a dirty, screaming toddler.  Wow, this sake is harsh.

I also went back to school this week to get a degree in a field I have already worked in successfully but was never properly trained for which is a huge pattern for me that I’m pushing now to break.  Do my sentences seem like they run on more than usual or is it just me?  I was thrilled to see that I’m not the oldest student in my program although I’m very certain I was never as young as the youngest.  They are exuberantly goofy and no matter where I sit I smell fruity shampoo which instantly makes me smile thereby making me the goofy one to them.  In this way we serve each other nicely and it bodes well for a harmonious year.

When I was the same age as my fellow students with the fruity hair I was obsessed with trying to cram as many experiences into one lifetime as I possibly could which is the excuse I like to give for never finishing the degree I’m going for now.  At 21 I did a solo cross-country drive to visit former classmates who were living in Boulder, Colorado.  I arrived at my friends’ house to find a note on their front door saying they’d be home later in the day so I bought a daily paper and sat in the park.

One employment ad caught my eye.  It said, “HIRING TODAY!”  It was for banquet wait staff at The Boulder Inn which was facing the park and staring right at me.  I walked over and got hired.  They gave me a uniform in a stay-fresh plastic bag and let me use their phone so I could answer a “Roommate Wanted” ad placed by a graduate student named Annie Redfeather who I assumed to be Native American but who turned out to be a blonde white girl from northern California.  By the time I met up with my friends at their house that evening I had a job and a place to live.  It was, you know, the seventies.

At the end of my first week at work I was checking the schedule posted outside the manager’s office when I was almost knocked over by the assistant manager who was bolting out after telling management about the snuggly warm place they could put her job and she hoped it would fit.  A guy in a suit opened the door she had just slammed and looked at me standing alone in the hallway.  “Do you work here?  Do you want to be the assistant manager?”  I packed the uniform back into the stay-fresh bag and traded it in for a desk and a salary.  Like I said, it was the seventies.

One night there was a wild storm in Boulder and the front desk clerk couldn’t make it in so I offered to stay and work the late night shift.  The hotel was understaffed due to the weather and there was an emergency booking for a group that was passing through to Denver but couldn’t make it there until the storm passed.  I was walking from my office to the front desk when I heard a noise at the side door so I went to open it and let the guest in.  The wind was fierce and as hard as I was pushing the door he was pulling it and finally it burst open and literally blew the guest in, a bushy-faced guy hidden beneath layers of fleece with a hood over his head.  He was clutching what looked like a guitar case covered with snow and he was concerned that I was getting wet.  He said he had other stuff to bring in so I took the guitar from him and told him to go and I’d hold the door.

He came back inside all soaked and thanking me for going out of my way and could I show him where the elevator was.  I walked him down the hall and when the elevator came I handed him the guitar and he was still thanking me as he pulled off his hood and I could see he was Jerry Garcia and the guys who had come in already were The Grateful Dead and they had a concert in Denver but they were stuck here for the night.  The next day they were gone and the regular staff made it in and hardly anyone had seen them but me and definitely no one held that guitar.

Now I have to go do my homework.  I probably won’t get many more chances to finish what I have once again begun so I know you’ll understand if I just keep on truckin’.

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Perfect Location! EZ walk schools/shops/RR Charming vus heaven/hell

Posted on January 6, 2007 by onesanevoice

Two thousand seven marks the twentieth year we have lived in our house.  It is a very nice house in a very nice suburban neighborhood, and my son would like nothing more than to work out a payment plan so Husband and I could quietly move out/pass on and allow him to assume ownership for the rest of his days.  Daughter, on the other hand, has not missed an opportunity in the past 20 years to remind me that any future need she may have for therapy is a direct result of moving her to this chickenheadwasteland.  Brooklyn rocks, this place sucks, thanks for sharing.

The news reports keep saying the housing market has gone soft, so I’m always checking on the value of the houses in our neighborhood, which is how I happened to notice this one particular realtor’s flier.  It had his picture in the corner, and I recognized him as a local parent who years and years ago used to show up at my son’s Little League games.  He had kids, but not on any of the teams, which made his being there peculiar to begin with.  But then he used to call out inappropriate things to the players like, “That pitch stunk!  What are you swinging at?” or he’d walk over to the coach and start whispering to him.  Nobody paid much attention because there is so much insanity at these games that nothing really stands out, and I don’t want to appear insensitive to people’s issues, so for the sake of this entry let’s just refer to him as Syko Dad.

At the end of one of the games when Son was in fifth grade (the year he was chosen MVP), I was waiting for him in the car when I looked up and noticed he was having some kind of verbal exchange with Syko Dad over by the dugout.  Son was standing calmly, leaning on his bat, and Syko Dad was getting more and more agitated as they talked.  Oh, this can’t be good, I thought, and was about to open the door when Son walked to the car and got in.

“What was that about?” I asked, concerned.

“He was telling me I used to be such a great player, but now I’m missing easy plays and I should just give up because I’ve lost my stuff and I’m an embarrassment to the team.”

“OMIGOD!  That is so terrible!  What did you say?”

“I just told him he’s an asshole.  Then he told me I was full of shit and I said, “No, I’m not because my mother says you’re an asshole, too.”

Which put me in a tough spot because on the one hand I don’t think kids should ever be disrespectful to adults, but on the other hand they shouldn’t let themselves be verbally abused either.  Plus I never tire of being quoted accurately, so I let it go.

It does give me a secret smile, though, that my kids have always fought their own battles.  When we first moved to this chickenheadwasteland, Daughter was in first grade and being miserably persecuted by the leader of the Mean Girls pack.  I asked her one day when I picked her up after school if she wanted me to have a talk with the girl’s mother, but she said she would take care of it.  She then walked over to the woman, introduced herself, and I could see them chatting.

As we walked home, I asked her how it went.  She said, “I told Clarissa’s mom that her daughter is very mean to me, and I’m new in class and she’s making it hard for me to make friends with the other girls because they all listen to Clarissa.”

I beamed with pride as I asked if she thought this would solve the problem.

“Well, she told me that if Clarissa is being mean to me, she must have a very good reason because Clarissa is a nice girl, so I should look inside myself to see what I’m doing to make Clarissa not like me.”

As I silently struggled with my emotions, my daughter looked up and gave me a philosophical smile.  “At least now I know why Clarissa is the way she is.”

Twenty years later, those two moments alone are worth more than this whole house.

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Things I Didn’t Know

Posted on December 30, 2006 by onesanevoice

It is New Year’s weekend, and when my adorable Husband woke up this morning, he shuffled over to me with his pale face and glassy eyes and said he was sorry but he wasn’t feeling well, so we’d have to cancel our plans.  There is nothing quite like a needy cute guy to awaken the nurture gene within me, so I put my arms around his neck and asked in a soothing voice, “What can I do for you, sweetheart?”  To which he replied, “Anything I tell you to.”

When Husband and I married six years ago, he graciously consented to move into the home I shared with my teenage children.  He had done this same thing for his first wife, who sadly left him a widower after ten happy years.  They had raised five boys together, sons from her first marriage, with the youngest being a teenager when she died.  Years later, voluntarily repeating that living situation might seem like more deja vu than one person would be comfortable with, but Husband embarked on his new family arrangement with generosity and a sense of adventure.

Shortly after moving in, he walked around the house with his toolbox repairing the many things I had neglected during the time I was a single parent with no innate fixit talents.  At this time Son was in high school and Daughter was away at her first year in college.  “How long has this front door creaked like this?” he asked me.  “Creaked like what?” was my oblivious response.  In the same way that people whose homes face the railroad tracks become immune to the thunderous sound of the trains, I had become deaf to household noises I could do nothing about.

But other residents of the house knew different.  The next time Daughter was home from school, she closed the newly silent front door behind her and stood transfixed, staring at it.  When she turned around to face me her cheeks were red and her eyes ablaze.  “It’s not fair!” she wailed.  She looked past my stunned face to Son who was standing behind me, hands in pockets, smirking wildly.  “Of course it’s fair,” he assured her.  “No, no, no, no!” Daughter insisted, fiercely shaking her head.  After much questioning on my part, it became clear that the kids always thought I was the one who made the door creak.  That I literally installed the creak as an alarm to notify me when the door opened or closed after curfew.  Apparently, Daughter had spent an inordinate amount of time devising ways to close the front door soundlessly to no avail.  And now, after she left the house, the problem solved itself for her smirking brother.

In a way it made us even.  A big treat for my daughter when she was five years old was to go to lunch with her father’s receptionist.  We lived in Brooklyn above my ex-husband’s medical practice when the kids were very small, and Daughter adored Doc’s twenty-something assistant, Robin.  One day a week I would allow her to accompany Robin for pizza and Doc would allow Robin to be gone an extra half hour.  Years later, when Daughter was about 12, she qualified a statement she made in conversation by saying “according to Tony.”  “Tony who?” I asked.  “Tony from the tanning salon in Coney Island,” she responded.  Then we just looked at each other as her entire body said “Oops.”  Turns out the deal between Daughter and Robin was that they’d gobble the pizza fast and have all that extra time for Robin to work on her tan as my five-year-old sat outside talking to the regulars.

All of which makes me certain you will not question my veracity when I swear on the life of Tony the tanning salon flunky that I never in my wildest imaginings could have known that front door creaked.

Happy New Year to all.

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Fast Food and Slow Burn

Posted on December 24, 2006 by onesanevoice

My 12-year-old son and I found ourselves in need of nourishment while shopping so we hastened to a nearby fast food restaurant for a quick fix.  It was one of the rare times in my life that the coupons in my wallet actually matched the eatery I was in and I thought this must be my lucky day.  I presented the coupons to the server behind the counter, a young woman of about 20, and informed her that my son would like his Chicken Lickin’ sandwich plain.

She looked at me with what I thought was concerned interest and said, “What don’t you want on it?”  I replied, “We don’t want anything on it.  Nothing at all.”  She cocked her head to the side and looked slightly confused.  “You mean you don’t even want the meat?”

“Excuse me?” I said, thinking I must not have heard right.  “Are you asking me if I want a Chicken Lickin’ sandwich with no meat?”

She looked mildly annoyed.  “Well, you said you didn’t want anything on it.”

“Don’t you think $5 is a lot of money for an empty bun with no chicken on it?  Yes, by all means, include the meat.”

She walked off grumbling and shaking her head.  I felt a little twitch developing over my left eye but the rumble in my stomach was stronger so I stayed put.  I then called her attention to the other coupon which advertised a Megaburger or a Megaburger with cheese and specified that I would like the Megaburger.  She returned with my son’s plain Chicken Lickin’ sandwich and a Megaburger with cheese.

“No, I think there’s a little mix-up here,” I said gently.  “I asked for a Megaburger.”
She yanked the coupon out of the register drawer and stuck it in my face.

“See?  It says right here ‘a Megaburger or a Megaburger with cheese’.  You can get either one.  And I gave you one.  I don’t know what your problem is.”

“The problem,” I said evenly, “is that the coupon is mine so I’m the one who gets to choose.  Not you.  I’m the customer so I get to pick.  That’s how it works.”

She rolled her eyes and snatched the unwanted sandwich off the tray and tossed it into the garbage.

“Why did you do that?” I gasped.  “Why did you throw away a perfectly good sandwich?”

She rolled her eyes again.  “Because we’re not allowed to serve returned food to another customer.”

“But I didn’t return it.  You put it on the tray.  I never even touched it.”

She ignored me.  I turned to my son who was busy giving me his I-can’t-believe-you’re-wasting-this-much-time-on-such-an-obvious-lost-cause look and I was beginning to agree with him.  But then she brought the drinks.

On the tray with the Megaburger and the hopefully not empty Chicken Lickin’ bun were two Cokes.  I pointed to one and said, “Only one is a Coke.  The other is an orange drink.”  Treating us to another display of eye-rolling she said, “They are obviously both Cokes.”

I leaned ominously across the counter stabbing at the tray with my finger.  “This one is a Coke.  That one may be disguised as a Coke but it’s supposed to be an orange drink.”  She grabbed the bogus Coke and flung it into the garbage on top of the virgin Megaburger with cheese.  My left eye was throbbing like one of the Budweiser toads.  I began rifling my wallet for the exact amount to avoid the misery of a situation that could possibly involve making change.

As my son and I finally sat down to enjoy our meal I thought that perhaps this incident could provide a valuable lesson regarding the necessity of education, courtesy and common sense.  I turned to my son and asked, “Is there anything that can be learned from the experience we just had?”

“Definitely,” he answered between bites.  “Next time we go to a diner.”

Copyright 1996 by author; first online publication 12/24/06

squirrel

Copyright 1996 by author

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Works and Plays Well With Others

Posted on December 17, 2006 by onesanevoice

One night last week I attended an office holiday party for a job I recently left starring the people I used to see every day and now miss dearly.  The celebration was at a restaurant about an hour from where I live but very close to my former office and I have to admit that it was the same restaurant where I planned last year’s party so it’s not like I’d never been there before.  Even so, I drove around the surrounding blocks so many times looking for parking that I actually had to pull over and turn on my GPS because I no longer had any idea where I was going.  I was like a block away.

There are people who can casually glance around and know immediately where they are and which direction they should be facing.  I would not have anything in common with these people.  Back in my alternative lifestyle twenties I lived in Boulder, Colorado which was perfect for me.  If I was driving toward the mountains I was headed home.  If the mountains were in my rear view mirror I was going to work.  I was never confused and remember this was the heyday of drugs.

There’s a feeling of instant comfort being around people whose lives and problems have intertwined with yours on a daily basis.  The people you work with spend more time per day with you than almost anyone else in your life and they get to witness every facet of your personality.  They’ve observed you under stress, shared your frustrations as well as your triumphs, listened to you obsess over nothing, heard you ream your kids out on the phone and may have even seen Mountain Dew come out your nose.  They’ve heard all your bullshit.  You’ve heard theirs.  If you’ve been away it’s like going home.  Or at least back to your first dorm.

I’ve never been sold on home-schooling because I think that the social experience we have in school prepares us to be healthy coworkers.  To paraphrase Kahlil Gibran, we learn much about ourselves from our reflection in the eyes of others.  You didn’t think that someone who used to live in Boulder wasn’t going to quote Gibran, did you?  Our school years teach us the boundaries we’ll need for the rest of our life which is why high school remains such a loaded subject for otherwise normal adults.  It’s a time when hormones, bad skin and still-forming brain tissue combine to magnify all real and imagined hurts not only as they happen but for years and years to come.  Ask the easygoing executive standing next to you at the water cooler wearing a tailored suit and nice watch if he went to his last high school reunion then step away from the cooler and no one gets hurt.

My husband and I were at dinner recently with a couple I know from college.  The guy and I even went to high school together before that.  He mentioned the name of someone from our high school days whom he had heard some bad news about and I cut him off mid-sentence with, “He dumped me sophomore year.  I couldn’t care less what happened to him.”  Everyone at the table just sat and looked at me dumbfounded.  My husband squeezed my hand and murmured, “Easy there, killer, it’s thirty-five years ago.”  But at that moment I was back at the dumping and trust me, I hadn’t thought about that moron for decades.

I think I’m over it now though.

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