Let the Games Begin

I was two sips into my morning coffee when the phone rang. Despite the early hour I laid my pen down, pushed my manuscript aside, and answered with a cheerful "Hello." After all, it was already past noon in England. Maybe the queen was calling.

But the voice responding to my salutation was not that of Royalty, it was a rumbling utterance asking if I were, ah . . . Mr. Burdock? Regardless of time of day, when a caller cannot pronounce my name, my "cheerful" flies out the window. "What do you want?" "Hi, Mr. Burdock, I'm Brian with MBNA, and I'd like to tell you about our revolutionary new credit card offer." "Sorry, Brian, my heart can't take the excitement."

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I dropped the receiver back into its cradle. In the last week alone, how many such calls had I received? The answer: too many. Returning to my writing was out of the question until I purged my anger over the unwanted interruption. I picked up my coffee cup and gazed at the junk mail piled high at the corner of my desk. These solicitations used to go straight to the trashcan until I read an article on identity theft; now I stockpiled it all until I got around to feeding it to my paper shredder. To the unwanted calls, an unlisted phone number might help, but could I also get an unlisted address? Probably not. So what to do? My sister-in-law, Ruby, was a rural route carrier and I'd asked her about the volume of junk mail. She said she didn't like carrying it anymore than I liked receiving it. But something she added about the prepaid envelopes stuck in my mind. The companies making the array of offers paid nothing until their envelope was actually used. Even then they did not pay first-class postage, only a bulk charge on weight of the individual envelopes. So maybe I was looking at all this from the wrong angle. Those making the calls believed their messages were important. Same for the offers by mail. When politicians do this, they call it messaging. Yes, it was a game of messaging. I wanted into the game. I carried the junk mail to the living room, pushed the sofa aside, and spread the offers in a large circle over the carpet. Working clockwise, I placed the five offers from Master Card into the prepaid envelope from Sears. Literature on Craftsman's do-it-all wrench and their booklet on building your own deck went into the envelope from the folks telling me I could make $2000 a week stuffing envelopes at home. Well, they got part of it right. And on and on I went until I completed the circle. I poured my second cup of coffee. The phone rang. Surely Brian wasn't calling back. So was the queen calling after all? I picked up the receiver and gave my best imitation of nobility. "Mr. Burdick's residence. Robert Burdick speaking." "Good morning, Mr. Burdock, this is Liz with Bell South. How are you today?" I exhaled one of those sighs usually released as I pull off my work boots and said, "Oh, Liz, thank you so much for calling. The kids rarely call anymore, you know. But don't worry. I'm doing okay. I suppose. Still have a little bleeding around the tubes from my colostomy operation, and, oh, oh, hold a sec while I do some blotting. Yes, Liz, that's better, but, you know, on these cold mornings the steel plate in my head still gives me chilling thoughts." "That's nice, Mr. Burdock, but I'd like to talk with you about your long distance carrier." "It's just wonderful, Liz. The bathroom is next to the bedroom, so it's not a long distance, and my wheelchair carries me there just fine." "I mean your long distance phone service." "It's just fine too, Liz. The phone is right here on the table between my oxygen bottle and the wheelchair, so it's not a real long distance to reach it." CLICK! I set my coffee cup aside, gathered up all the beautifully stuffed envelopes, and skipped to the mailbox. Let the games begin.