LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMP Out: Fay's Rehoboth Journal - Change is Good; Transition Sucks |
by Fay Jacobs |
It was rewarding to hear Troy Watson, writing in the last issue, say that he enjoyed my column. He also offered some ideas, should I run out of material. Hey, send them along! But, in the meantime, the frustration of relocating my entire life is inspirational stuff. Hell, just arranging phone service is lifes work. What are there now, twenty thousand phone companies? And they all called me tonight during dinner. "Hi, this is a courtesy call from MCI." If they were courteous they wouldnt call at 6 oclock. Apart from connecting and disconnecting service, which now take a minimum of a month each on hold with a robot, my favorite thing phone companies do is slamming. Has it happened to you yet? While you sleep, no-name long distance companies steal your account. Then, when you make calls, your new company electronically selects the highest possible rate in the hemisphere. Its Murphy Brown offering a dollar seventy five a minute. They should also automatically dial 911 for you when the bill comes. And just try to straighten it out. Short of having Amnesty International intervene, your only hope is spending the foreseeable future pressing 1 for Residential Service, 2 for billing questions, and 3 for the Spanish Inquisition. I was on the phone so long trying to get AT&T back that the operator, showing a refreshing sense of irony, ended our conversation with "Thanks for spending the day with Bell Atlantic." Following that, the first call I got was from some cheesy long-distance company, interrupting yet another meal to beg for business. Cant we pay them ten cents a minute to go away? Now Im into the traditional kind of slammingas in down the receiver. As long as I was aggravated anyway, I called the cable company. First I was put on hold for the afternoon, forced to hear non-stop promos for Nicholas Cage movies. Then, Operator Einstein couldnt figure out how to order service at a new house where cable had never dared to go before. Duh. When she put me on hold, I came into a movie promo at the very words "Its Dumb and Dumber." No comment. Meanwhile, between calls to local utilities, Bonnie and I are holed up in our condo, belongings piled to the ceiling, waiting to get into our new house. The transitions even making the dog nuts. The poor little guy doesnt understand what happened to his backyard or why his kind is banned from the boardwalk. His frustration manifested itself as a craving to chew wicker. Great. Its a beach rental. Wicker Central. A Moxie munching ground. Yesterday, for wicker du jour, he ate half a chair. Coming to the defense of my furniture, I barricaded the dog in the kitchen when I went to work and came home to an appalling sight. Dont ask me to interpret this, but Moxie managed to take a bite out of the umbottomof his plush toy cow, making it an anatomically correct Ms. Cow. It looked like something Georgia OKeefe would have painted. Actually, two of our men friends found it appalling; I kind of liked it. But then Im easily amused these days. In my continuing transition to office maven, I called the people at Intellifax (Oxymoron Alert!!!) for help when the fax machine herniated itself with crumpled paper. They told me, and Im quoting here, "Youre sticking it in the wrong hole." Ah, a continuation of Moxies orifice theme. But as frustrations go, by last week I finally had the mother of all irritants, an example by which to measure all future frustrations. It happened as we moved Bonnies office stuff to Rehoboth. Try sitting in traffic, at a dead stop, on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (always frustrating), only this time, as the minutes tick by, you are paying the moving van stuck behind you $70 an hour. Auggghhh!! The upshot is change may be great, but transitions a bitch. I have to give credit to friendsmy Sarasota Budsfor that particular sentiment, and apologize to them for the nickname Sarasota Buds. But to me, theyre forever linked with that Florida geriatric haven. When we met them, Bonnie and I were in a Sarasota restaurant with my father, trying to explain why it was sensible to quit my long-time job, sell the house, uproot Bonnies business and move to the beach. Tough sell. As President of the Bank of Dad, he worried wed be dialing for dollars. "No, wed be fine," I said. Then I told him it really just came down to a sense of community. Our friends, the welcoming atmosphere, my opportunity to write for LETTERS, the diversity, the wonderful people wed met. I talked and talked, but Dad looked wild-eyed, dwelling on that teensy "quit my job" part. Just then, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see a nice-looking stranger, about my age. "Are you Fay Jacobs, of LETTERS from CAMP Rehoboth?" he asked. Now really, what was the chance of that happening a thousand miles from Rehoboth Avenue? A zillion to one? I fessed up to it being me, as he introduced himself and his partner, glanced to my left and said, "And you must be Bonnie. We have a place in North Shores and enjoy reading LETTERS. We recognized you, Fay, from the picture. We just moved to Rehoboth full-time. Isnt it a wonderful place?" Needless to say, my father was gape-jawed. Either he instantly understood our babbling about community, or, more plausibly, he wondered when Id had time to set up this ruse. Either way, after we chatted a while and the guys went back to their table, Dad cautiously endorsed our planned beach relocation and stopped stuttering "quit your job????" To this day, Im sure he still thinks it was a set-up. And now that weve completely uprooted ourselves, final push courtesy of those Sarasota Buds, its only fair that they got to counsel us last week over fifty cent Tacos at Arenas. Yes, they said, "change is good; its just transition thats hell. Well, if the end result is that a bad day negotiating for phone service at the beach is better than a good day anywhere else, well take the traffic-snarled moving vans, dialing for dummies and wicker chomping. Heck, I have to have something to rant and rave about. But just in case my life calms down anytime soon, Troy should send his column ideas to me c/o CAMP. Its things like hearing from readers, making acquaintances in strange cities, and joining Rehoboths year-round population that make us surer every day that we were right to run away to the beach. Of course, while Im typing here, Bonnies fending off a call from Sprint, Moxies got his incisors around the coffee table leg, and were so anxious to move in and get settled were ready to gnaw the wicker ourselves. Change is good; change is good; change is good... Look for Fay Jacobs CAMPOut in every issue of LETTERS. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 9, No. 5, May 21, 1999 |