Yesterday at work I got a call from a spritely sounding 103 year old, who had lost all of the papers concerning her account with the company I work for: "I am very upset with myself! Very very upset, it was really rather silly of me to forget where I put them." I informed her, politely, but with more than a the slight tinge of professional coldness that I mantain when talking to clients,that I was required to ask her at least a few security questions to help verify her identity.

"Well, you can ask all you want, but I don't know how much I will be able to tell you, since, as I've said already, I've lost all of my papers! I've torn my house apart looking for the stuff. If only you could see my room now, it's such an awful mess! An awful mess! I don't know if it makes any difference, but I have a legal document here that says I have had a head injury, or else I wouldn't have lost all my papers. It was really rather silly of me. So I don't know. Ask me the questions then."

She was off on the balance of her account by several tens of thousands of dollars: "I am soo soo sorry!" she said "I really she should know this!" and the tone of her voice became momentarily venomous: "But I not sure any way, since that last time I called you people really made and awful mess up of everything!" I asked her what the error had been, and she said that she couldn't remember, but it was quite a mix up and if she could only find her papers she'd know what it was. The venom was forgotten I asked her if she could get some other account related information and she went off to get it. "Pleaasse don't hang up. " she pleaded. "I'm sorry I'm so slow, but since my head injury my brain isn't working quite right, so that's why I'm like this. I hope I'm not being too much of a nuisance for you"

I assured her that she wasn't and that I wasn't going anywhere, and she went off to find the account numbers I needed. She had a quavering, but still suprisingly young sounding voice, with just a faint touch of a British accent, and in the interim I mimicked it to my audience of bored co-workers: "I haven't been able to remember anything since my head injury!"

After what seemed like five minutes (which means it was probably a minute or so) she picked up the phone again: "Here I am, are you there? Oh Thank-Goodness you're still there! I thought you'd have gone. I'm just opening my purse now. Can you wait a moment longer while I do?"

"Of course." I said and put her on mute. I threw my hands up into the air and made another aside to my co-workers: "She's just gotta open her purse now!" I shook my head with exasperation, and my co-workers gave me satisfyingly pitying looks. I could hear her slowly opening her purse in the back. " Oh my god! She's just opening her purse now! "Ziiiiiipppppp..."

In spite of the long search through her purse she actually managed to provide me with all the correct information I needed with out any further difficulty. Sure that the rest of the call would not be as easy as that I braced myself for the travails to come, andI informed her that since she'd done that, we'd now have to reset her personal identification number.

"Oh my"! she said "I'm ever so sorry, but I don't think that I can do this on this phone! " Informing her that we'd have to reset it eventually so we might as well do it now she responded:

"Oh well, I suppose I should go to the other phone, then, but it will take me some time to get there. I am ever so sorry, You know, I move much more slower since the head injury. You promise you won't go anywhere will you?" I assured her again that no, I wouldn't, put her on mute, and then groaned to my co-workers that she had to go to her OTHER phone now and I'd probably be waiting ANOTHER 5 minutes,at LEAST. Of course, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make fun of head injury one more time: "Alan, you are so funny!" said Miljana, clapping happily at my performance and, after a momentary flash of guilt, I muttered unconvincingly that, "I shouldn't really be making fun of an old women's head injury, I suppose..." and my eyes darted around nervously, I was half-expecting to be struck down in my ergonomic chair by a retributive bolt of thunder from the God of Cheap Laughs.

In time she returned to the phone. The feat of typing four numbers on a phone keypad followed by the pound key can be a daunting one for even the youngest of clients, and I was shocked that, again, she did it without any difficulty. She thanked me again for my patience (little did she know) and I asked her whether there was anything else I could help her with.

A little pause followed and then I could hear her gearing up for an energetic social exchange, now that the business was done: "Funny type of weather we're having this year. Do you know that when I looked out into my garden this morning I noticed that the Primroses were poking their heads up through the soil! Can you imagine! In January no less! You'll regret that in a few days I said to them! And it's true because, really, we could still get a few good frosts before spring comes. I live on the West Coast and it is very nice weather out here, but do you know, this has been one of the mildest winters for us, even out here. No snow at all, really. Oh, maybe a few flakes here and there perhaps, but really, remarkably mild, not like winter at all, even for out here. "

"Well, I'm in Toronto and its very cold out here. You're convincing me to move out to West! Sounds pretty nice."

"Oh it is" she assured me."Its really and truly beautiful out here. Really a beautiful place, I wouldn't give it up for anything."

I figured that I could drop the proffessional reserve for at least a brief moment and said: "I've never been out west, but I'm planning on visiting friends out there with my wife this year. I've heard that it's really nice out there."

"Well I'm on Vancouver Island you see, I have a nice little house and it's on such a quiet spot on a small lake, and its so lovely, the little birds singing, and sometimes in the morning the deer come up from out of the woods and sometimes other little creatures come up to visit. It' really a lovely lovely little spot and I wouldn't trade it for all the tea in china!"

An image of the purple light of a temperate West-Coast morning sky reflecting off of the glassy surface of a lake instanstaneously came to mind, and in the foreground a deer gracefully tip-toed across the bright green lawn, and then darted away zig-zag into the forest, its belly flashing white.

She finished by saying "Well, Look make sure to look me up when you get out here and I'll take you around and show you all the sights."

posted by Alan
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9:13 AM

Wednesday, February 12, 2003 

32 Truck Pile Up

Checking my email and perusing The Comics Journal Message Board this morning Marianne, flipping through the channels, and paraphrasing a news report shouts: "32 Truck Pile Up!"

"Where?" I ask, but no answer is forthcoming- she has already moved on, trying to find a channel worth watching in the cableless universe.

32 Trucks seems like a lot, but not out of the question. In fact, considering the 401 Traffic I make my way through on my way to work every morning, 32 actually seems like totally reasonable number of the monsters to pile up on one another. It's not unusual to see convoys of 15 or 20 big rigs occupying two lanes of the highway like a solid wall of steel and advertisements. This morning while passing alongside I became fascinated by a strange bright green biological goo dripping out of an air hole on a trailer that looked like it would have carried 100 or so animals but was now empty. The goo put some very disturbing visuals in my mind. Just the other day, stuck behind one of the monsters in a traffic jam I became entranced by its mud besplattered back doors, upon which melting ice water had created lovely pattern that looked uncannily like a forest of Birch Trees, which brought me tranquility for a few moments. Most of the time the rumbling vaccuum created by the things when the rip by at 120 kms an hour just scares the shit out of me, and I try not to think of being crushed under their wheels.

I passed by a truck from Moussouri that had a Sticker with a visual of Cab whose trailer that was an stylized American Flag waving in the wind and the caption maintaining: "Without Trucks, America Stops Running". Which is true enough I suppose.

While on our honeymoon in Guysborough County in Nova Scotia this past fall one of the main things that pointed to a difference between the depressed economy in that part of Nova Scotia and the apparently booming economy of neighbouring New Brunswick was the noticeable absence of trucks anywhere on the roads. Quite a pleasant change adding very much to the attractiveness of the already beautiful winding ocean-side roads for me, but I found it interesting that for the local residents and local politicians this absence of large dirty smelly diesel spewing monsters must be a terrifying sign of impending (or already arrived) ecomomic doom.

posted by Alan
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8:58 PM

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