Little Do They Disappoint

141.

Much like the game clock ticking down the final few seconds of a football game, the rest and relaxation’s official designation of ‘over’ is when I switch my cell to back to normal operation. I have three modes:

1) I am unavailable (with certain exceptions).

2) Personal.

3) Professional. 

Since the dawn of satellite communications this has created problems. The line that was once a mile and a half wide is now finer than toad hair. What, or more accurately who, constitutes inclusion onto one list or the other? Sometimes it seems more important to provide accurate directions to the pizza delivery guy than bloviate with an ambitious state department aide. Or Julie. She is one of the handful of people that have earned the ‘prestige’ of ranking on all three. 

I switch back to ‘normal’ usage and immediately consider the early retirement package TOM has been pushing my way since the fall of the twin towers. In a day and a half there are 113 new messages, broken down by the following scorecard:

Hang ups or junk: 46.

Personal: 3

Professional: 64

It seems that I am more popular as a pro than a real person. But, I reason, emergencies don’t normally fix themselves while on hold. If you are knee deep in water from the suddenly incapacitated  washing machine, your first call probably isn’t to Aunt Rita. You call the plumber. If your main asset is behaving abnormally, you don’t call your tennis pro for her opinion on lob shots at love forty. And when there is nowhere to turn but us, well, you don’t call into a sports talk show to offer your opinion on Pete Rose. 

It is 0400 and the party is over. Reality has sounded the siren and it is a five-star, code-red, barn’s on fire alarm. 

It would have been a strategic error, or perhaps a tactical miscalculation, to assume anything but this. 

I am on the Interstate, blue toothed and wired, checking in on the messages left during my thirty-hour sabbatical. I roll through the professional first in order to get a feel for the chaos and disaster recently surfaced and circulating. They range from the supportive and cooperative to the antagonistic, bullying, threatening and altogether vicious. ‘Good to be back’ I muse while passing what appears to be a distracted driver in a Fiat Cinquecento. 

With fifteen minutes left in my commute, a plan of attack one percent from totaled, the professional calls given their diligence, due or otherwise, the three in the personal file are left. I check in. 

TOM, Julie and Davis. My boss, former girlfriend and her ex-husband who is also currently in charge of our squadron as I, what? Take a vacation? 

I delay the listen to conspire speculation on what these three could possible want to add to the tormenting, nightmarish circumstance that comprises the current situation. 

Little do they disappoint.