Sure, Dad, LOTS of people were cool with hearing news 6 months after the fact.
They were called “People who lived before the 1840s…”
“Please enter your 24-Digit PIN now to connect your call…”
Oh, the humanity–er, I mean the humiliation. All I wanted to do was make my weekly call to check in with my dad, like any good college student. But was I being rewarded for being a good and faithful son?
No. No I was not.
Let’s start with that 24-Digit PIN. I know it was 2001, but still, for anyone to have to resort to using a pre-paid calling card was an indignation that no one deserved to suffer. In fact, it was this very situation that made me go out and get my very first faux-wood paneled cell phone only a week later. But, alas, in this moment I was sans cellular telephone, and my private access to telecommunication services had just been cut off.
This wasn’t really my fault, though. You see, I had been subletting a friend’s apartment for the summer, and, on account of it being the first of August, his lease had just expired and I had to relocate to his new house. However, his future roommates at this place were all hip and ‘with it’ and already had cell phones, so they had eschewed the idea of shelling out money to pay for such an antiquated concept as a ‘landline’.
Okay, so I had to use a pre-paid calling card–big whoop, right? Well, not so fast, slick. Did I mention from whence I was making this phone call? No? Then please allow me to enlighten you. I wasn’t about to subject myself to the abject debasement of being seen using a gas station payphone, so, thinking on my feet, I said to myself, “Ah-ha! I know of a semi-private phone from whence I can call my Noble and Beloved Father!” And subsequently set off on foot to the breezeway of Dickens Hall1It wasn’t actually Dickens Hall, but one located symmetrically on the other side of the library, but was demolished in order to expand the library. I couldn’t remember the name of this hall, nor could Google. on K-State’s campus.
What awaited me there? Oh, just one of those metal emergency phones mounted on the wall. Did it have an actual handset for my convenience? No! Just a speakerphone. But what it did have was a key pad, and as it turned out, you could get away with calling other phone numbers besides 911, if one only dared try. With calling card in hand, that was all I needed to repurpose the ‘Emergency Use Only’ technology for my own devices. (Side note: this was around 8 at night, so virtually no one would be around to witness me making a personal call via speaker phone. Doing this midday? No way, José!)
Now, any dignified gentlemen would have made his way to such a prestigious appointment on the finest of bicycles, but I didn’t even have that base-level luxury. As noted previously, I had to hoof it the several blocks to campus on account of being bike-less.
This wasn’t really my fault, though…
*checks notes*
Wait, strike that–this part really was my fault. Only a week or two earlier, I was peddling on my way to somewhere, and the campus library happened to be along my route. Now, back in the dark ages of 2001, I didn’t have my own computer or internet access, so any time I wanted to send or receive electronic mail (‘e-mail’) I had to go to the computer lab in the library’s basement.
During that particular summer, my good friend (and future ex-girlfriend), the acclaimed Tiffany Chestnut, was studying abroad in Mexico, so I spent many an hour hammering out mini-tomes to send to her to keep her company whilst in such a strange and foreign land. On this fateful July day, though, I assured myself that since I had somewhere to be, I would only send her a brief missive–one, maybe two paragraphs, tops.
“This will take me nary but 5 minutes!” I assured myself as I parked my bike literally in the middle of the sidewalk, eschewing the security of a bike rack only 10 feet away.
Well, I ended up composing digital ramblings for a good hour and a half, yet somehow I was still surprised when I came out back into the daylight only to find that my precious bicycle had been stolen…
“So what’s new on the farm, Daddy-o?” I cackled into the general vicinity of the emergency phone’s microphone.
Having successfully swallowed my pride and having done what I had to do to make this phone call happen, I finally started to relax and was looking forward to a routine (if not boring) chat with ol’ Papa Bob about what had transpired in his neck of the woods in the past 7 days. (Just kidding–there aren’t any ‘woods’ in Southwest Kansas. Maybe I should have used the phrase ‘neck of the wheat fields’ instead?)
“Welp, Kim had her baby. It’s a boy!” my dad crackled back through the speaker.
“Oh, you mean that Kim’s pregnant, and they just found out they’re having a boy via ultrasound, right?”
“No, she actually had him. His name’s Reed, and he’s a flaming redhead like the rest of that family,” my dad corrected me.
Now, I wasn’t perfect when it came to keeping track of my older brother, ‘Lyle’,2That’s his middle name, and ever since I found that a year or so ago, I can’t resist calling him that every chance I get. and his family, but the fact that he and his wife Kim were even expecting their 4th redheaded child came as complete news to me.
“What the hell, Dad? Was anyone going to tell me that she was even preggos in the first place? A little heads-up would have been nice.”
“What? How did you not know that? Get with it, Son!” my dad patronized me.
“How did I not know that??? I didn’t know that! Because you didn’t tell me!”
“Well, who’s fault is that?” Dad busted out one of my most-hated phrases of his.
Unlike the stolen bike, and very much like the disconnected landline, this was–repeat after me, class–wasn’t really my fault, though.
“Who’s fault?!? Yours! It’s totally on you–you’re my singular source for family news, you old fart! Don’t you try to pass the buck off to me–it was your responsibility to tell me. Geez, Dad–we worked together every day for 6 weeks this summer, and you never thought once to let me in on the news…”
“Oh, holy sh*t–I would know the silhouette of that bike from a mile away, but surely it couldn’t be, could it?”
Despite being blindsided by the news that I was an uncle yet again, I was feeling pretty chipper about the fact that my prized brood of nieces and nephews was one larger than when I had awoken that morning. And now…this?
Dickens Hall was right next to the library, and as I walked out of there and away from 9 o’clock phone call with Dad, I saw something in the darkness that left me in disbelief: my previously stolen bike.
Or so I suspected, at least. I sauntered on over to the library bike racks to inspect it, and sure enough! ‘Twas my bike! I couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that whoever had stolen was, like I had been, pretending to lock it up but not actually doing it.
You see, I had one of those U-locks on it that I kept locked to the body when not in use, until one day the lock mechanism froze up, rendering it permanently attached to the bike. And if you can’t unlock a lock, then you can’t lock up your bike to a post or anything…but, if you lean the bike against the post/rack, it actually creates the illusion that the lock is attached to both. So even though I hadn’t technically been locking my bike up for the last year, I was faking it well enough that it never got stolen under those circumstances.
Whoever stole my bike, though, hadn’t counted on me showing up and seeing through this little charade of my own invention. Mwah-hah-hah-ha!
Vengeance was mine! I promptly re-stole my bike and rode off into the night, with my dignity (mostly) restored…
The point of the story is, dammit, if you’re the main source of information for friend or family member, be responsible and make sure you keep them informed of the important things. And don’t you dare try to victim-blame them for not knowing what they didn’t know–you know, the exact thing that only you could have told them. That’s just undignified.
Of course, though, it’s important to keep perspective right? At the end of my story, I ended up one nephew and a bike that I had previously (and stupidly) practically given away. So, really I can’t complain.
My only regret in all of this? I really wish I would have staked out that bike rack so I could have seen the look of confusion and disappointment on the face of that book-loving opportunistic bike thief as they realized Karma had come back around to give them a swift kick in the ass..
Content created on: 18 March 2023 (Saturday)
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