Five, six, seven calls, I lose count
listening to an automated, computer
generated, monotone, female voice over
and over and over in order to get to a
human and this after two thousand miles
on the road and two calls days ago to
make sure the cable company turned on
the cable so we could watch the tail
end of day three at the Masters before
falling asleep in the chairs. I’m argu-
ing with a computer generated voice,
which says over and over, “I’m sorry,
I didn’t quite get that. Let’s try this
again.” and then, the heaven sent words,
“Please wait on the line for a represent-
ative.” Finally. Then sweet, sincere boys
and girls blame each other just like in
the garden: tech says billing got it wrong;
billing says tech doesn’t understand what
is going on, but only in this one particular
instance, just this one time which never,
ever happened before. My situation is so
unique. My voice rises. I’m not following
Jesus; I don’t love Jesus anymore; I’m
following my heroes Lenin, Stalin, Idi
Amin and the Gestapo and yell into the
phone to prove it. We talk over each
other. I’m the weasely, little guy who
stands over Cool Hand Luke and says in
a lousy, Texas drawl, “What we have
here is a failure to communicate.” I
shout it at the kids with those ob-
noxiously, unflappable, angelic voices
who say all the right things without mean-
ing any of them and who just want to shoot
the weasel with the silly, southern drawl
but who continue to say ad nauseam, “I
understand; no problem; yes, perfect, of
course; this will only take a minute; we
appreciate your business; is it all right
to put you on hold for a few minutes while
I talk with my supervisor? I think this
should fix the problem.” Finally, after
infinity on the phone, one simple little
reboot boots up Phil Mickelson making a
birdie putt on sixteen. I have found Jesus
again and walk the sawdust trail. I
repent and give the last sweet-voiced,
billing person five on a scale of one
to five to question after question
after question, over and over and over
in the post phone call survey that comes
close to umpteen verses of “Just As I Am”
as penance for having idolized and imitated
Attila the Hun just a few minutes ago.