Ring! Ring!
No, it’s not Avon calling (though they can be equally annoying.) A little known fact about this time of year…it’s actually phonebook season! Yes, you read that right-phonebook season.
Where I live (in Texas) we seem to be hounded by phonebooks. Not just hounded, more like physically assaulted, not even assaulted is the right word-it’s more like physically marauded. Like the phone companies have waged some kind of war on their helpless uninformed victims and they set out covering the terrain, filling in the gaps, sealing up their turf. One day, you’re innocently walking down the street and the next? Clubbed in the back of the head by some street punk wannabe hurling phonebooks at random people’s doorsteps. Really, it happens in Texas. Not too often but especially a lot during phonebook season. (For some reason, the celestial telephonal “powers that be” seem to like the beginning of the year.)
We get phonebooks that are specialized (anybody want an “only southern Williamson County” phonebook? I have a spare.) We get large, gigantic phonebooks (County Yellow Pages are living pretty large this year. Cut back on the BBQ, ok, guys?) We get ginormous gigantic living large let’s help five year olds skip the high-chair and reach the steering wheel and the top shelf phonebooks (Austin White Pages at your service!) It’s like a never-ending stream of tiny printed poorly glued coupon infested pile of useless information destined to be set aside and recycled next year but still must be delivered in early January for our convenience. Oh the Humanity!
If that weren’t bad enough, they’ve started to show up in the middle of the night.
Picture this. You’re half asleep. It’s morning. You really don’t want to wake up. You haven’t had coffee yet (this is fiction, work with me.) With your bleary eyes, you fumble to open the door and let the dog out, only to find yourself tripping over yet another pile of soon-to-be recycled “phone foo” that has landed oh-so-conveniently at your doorstep. Oh the horror of it all. I just can’t wait for phonebook season to end. I’m tired of tripping over my own doormat.
The worst part of all of this is that, the tin can and string-less powers that be confuse us all into thinking that there’s is “the real” phonebook. Like, there’s one “out there” in the great beyond that’s “real” and it’s theirs and we all need to seize it and grab it and never let it go. It’s gotten so hard to tell them apart anymore, what with like no less than 50 of them arriving at my doorstep each day, each one claiming to be “real” and legit. I’m confused. I’m six inches taller. My back hurts from so many trips to the recycle bin. Somebody, please, make it stop.
If that weren’t bad enough, all of my friends have unlisted numbers. It makes me look at this pile of soon to be rubbish and ask myself, “who are these people?” I mean, who exactly, is listed in a phonebook anymore? And, if you were listed, would you need this pile of “phone foo” to find yourself? (Gosh, I hope not-for your sake.)
The only bright spot on this horizon is that fact that, well, they’ve delivered so many phonebooks to my door already, there couldn’t possible be anymore lurking out there in the bushes now, right? (Please say, “yes.” Please, for the love of God, money, and great American muscle cars built before 1973, say, “yes,” now.)
Until next “oh please let this be the last of it…”
