Life Lurches On

creative commons

So I buy a long distance phone card at Superstore when I’m grocery shopping last night because I had to use one once recently and they’re pretty handy things really especially considering work doesn’t want me racking up long distance charges on my work cell phone which is my only phone, right? So I get home and put the groceries away and start dinner because it’s late since I stayed late at work and then went grocery shopping and now I’m getting hungry and then I think hey I should call ____ using my new long distance phone card, right? So I pull the thing out and put on my glasses and hold the card under the lamp because the print on those things is super super tiny and I don’t know how they expect us old people with less than perfect vision can ever read the silly things and I dial the teeny tiny phone number on the card and then when I get to the prompt where they ask for the card number I’m all like what’s the card number maybe that number there so I plunk in the super long number on the card and then the prompt says I’m sorry that is an incorrect card number so I plunk it in again thinking I’d mis-plunked and it tells me the same damn thing, right? So I’m all like what the heck is this crap and I peer at the teeny tiny writing on the back of the phone card again and then read the instructions that I didn’t read the first time because the writing is like super super tiny and there it instructs me to scratch the back of the card in a certain spot and that will be my card number and so I scratch that part of the card and get those black flakes all over my sweater and under my thumb nail because you have to scratch to reveal the card number so you can use the card to make a long distance phone call with the card, right? So I hold the card under the lamp and peer at the teeny tiny phone number and I dial it and then a voice prompts me to enter the card number and I plunk that in and then the voice tells me I have entered an incorrect number and to try again so I re-plunk in the number that I revealed by scratching the card and getting black flakes all under my thumb nail and again I’m told I have entered an incorrect number, right? So I’m like really damn irritated by this point and reread the teeny tiny print to see if maybe this card doesn’t work with cell phones or for people who have the initials RS or some other shit I missed in the teeny tiny print and so I think OK I’ll try one more time and then my rice starts to burn so I go save that and then come back and hold the card under the lamp and read the teeny tiny phone number off the card and then plunk in the card number semi-obscured by some of the black flakes I didn’t quite scratch all off because it gets everywhere especially under my thumb nail and then the voice tells me I have entered an incorrect card number and I’m like jeez how bloody annoying so I try one more time and partway through dialling the teeny tiny phone number my cell phone punctures my ear drum with the sonic ping that is the aural indicator that my cell phone is out of power, right? So clutching my one ear in agony I go plug in my cell phone to charge it and then I go turn over my pork chop so it will be burned evenly on both sides and then I scrape the rice that adhered to the bottom of the pot when it boiled over and then cover it and turn the heat down and then I go back and intently peer at the teeny tiny writing on the back of the goddamned card and try to suss out why the bloody thing won’t work and I see the teeny tiny help phone number so I think hey maybe I should call those bastards and give them a piece of my mind but then remember my phone is charging in the other room and besides I’m really hungry and my well-done dinner is more than ready to joylessly consume and maybe some grub will leave me less perturbed, right? So I chew chew chew my burned pork chop and crunchy rice and raw carrots and then I go get my semi-charged phone from the other room and I am determined to make a long distance call with the fucking calling card before I go to bed or else so I peer at the teeny tiny writing and dial the number and enter the card number after the prompt and am told again that I have entered an incorrect card number, right? So now I again notice that I haven’t quite scratched all the black flakes off the card to reveal the card number and maybe that number right at the end is not actually a six but is in fact an eight and oh yeah scratching a teensy bit more black shit off the card and getting it under my nail reveals this to be the case and so I try one more time and dial the teeny tiny number and then enter this adjusted card number with the newly revealed last digit when prompted and what do you know the call goes through and is actually ringing at the other end, right?

So I get voicemail and leave a message, and then hang up and think my life is just a series of joyful experiences, right?