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Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

The Scaredest Moment…

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I love the Quora site as a source of writing exercises. The site’s modus operandi is to throw out questions and ask people to respond with little essays.

Because they open the questions to everyone who signs up, of course this MO generates a spectacular amount of stupid trolling from real or de facto eight-year-olds. Some people never do grow up. 😀

However, every now and again someone poses a query that functions handsomely as a writing prompt. One such was this:

What Was Your Most Frightening Moment?

There’s something wrong with me, I guess, that causes me not to get scared until after the fact. It’s ever been thus…the first time I understood that was what happened occurred when the driver of a steam roller almost ran me down as he was flattening asphalt in an alley behind our house. I managed to jump onto a fence and haul myself out of the way, feeling the thing brush my clothes. Not scared till a few minutes later, after I realized how close to death I’d come. I was a little kid: 8 or 10 years old.

Adrenaline makes my world slow down. One day I was driving in to my first job from a suburb. At the time, you had to drive several miles across a country road through cotton and onion fields. A dumb kid, I was flying low across this two-lane road, driving a ’67 Ford Fairlane, one of the most dangerous pieces of junk ever conceived by an American carmaker. From the right, some farm worker ambles onto the road — he doesn’t see me coming and now he’s smack in front of me and I’m going 60 miles an hour. Or more.

I slam on the brakes. In those days there was no such thing as anti-lock brakes. Or adequate seat belts. Or air bags. Or any other such debris. And I’m a kid, remember: a dumb one, at that. I don’t know any better than to tromp the brake pedal to the floor.

The car actually JUMPS into the air. No Joke! It leaps into the air and comes down in the oncoming lane, its wheels presumably still spinning at 60 miles an hour. I look up and there’s a car in the oncoming lane, flying straight at me, a horrified look on its all-too-visible driver’s face.

At this point a series of thoughts goes through my mind.

The clown who pulled out in front of me is now in the lane that my car leapt out of. He’s moving right beside me, fast as he can go because of course he figures he’s about to get smashed, too. The choices are three:

• Pull my car back into my lane and broadside the guy beside me.
• Pull left onto the left-hand shoulder and pray the guy in the oncoming car doesn’t also try to pull off the road.
• Head-on the guy in the oncoming lane.

Literally, I’m thinking this stuff through: it’s weird how clearly you can think and how fast you can think, given a large enough dose of adrenaline.

I decide on option (b): Pull off the road to the left. At 60 miles an hour.

Well, probably a little slower than that, because of course I have slammed on the brakes at one point…to little avail. The car is probably moving at about 40 to 50 mph at this point.

Incredibly, the dirt on the shoulder was hard enough that the car’s wheels didn’t sink into it.

Incredibly, the guy in the oncoming lane didn’t think fast enough to pull his car to his right, onto the same shoulder.

Incredibly, my car did not careen into the irrigation ditch beside the road.

Incredibly, my car did not spin out.

There’s only one explanation: God was on my side that morning. And on those other two guys’ side.

No, I was not scared at any time while this antic was occurring. Only after the other two cars sailed off and I caught my breath did a moment of terror arrive. I managed to make it to a gas station at the intersection of the country lane and a freeway, where I had to stop, go inside, and sit for a good half-hour or 45 minutes before I could get back in the car and proceed to work.

Not a bad little squib, eh?

Et vous? What was your most terrifying moment?

Phone-dango!

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So… I’m in the Costco thinking about replacing my houseful of phones, the current system evincing signs of advanced age. All the batteries are running down, so every time I turn around I pick up another dead handset. And lo! There on the shelf at the Costco is this elegant Panasonic model. It’s an elaborate lash-up, very much like mine only updated for the 21st century. Not only does it include 87 gerjillion (well…four) wireless handsets plus the required answering machine, this thing includes a call-blocking feature similar to the much-missed CPR Call Blocker.

I threw my CPR Call Blocker out after Cox barged in and forced its customers to switch to VoIP, having been told it wouldn’t work with Cox’s accursed modem. Cox, however, now offers NoMoRobo, supposedly the be-all and end-all for nuisance call blocking.

Not so much. The CPR Call Blocker 5000 cut the nuisance calls to at most one or two a day, but more typically to none.

NoMoRobo? Holy sh!t, what a nuisance! It takes the robocall nuisance and multiplies the aggravation by a factor of about 10. It does not block robocalls, because the robocallers automatically generate thousands, hundreds of thousands, and ultimately (one presumes) millions of fake phone numbers. They target your area code and phone exchange, or one close to where you live, so that incoming calls appear to be coming from someone in your neighborhood. The kids’ school, perhaps. Your neighbor across the street. Your pharmacy, telling you a prescription is ready. WhatEVER. Pick up the phone, and you get a scam.

The deal here with NoMoRobo is that it can not be programmed to block all calls in a given area code. None of my friends, acquaintances, or business contacts have the same exchange as mine. This means that any call incoming from this exchange is, by definition, a scam and nothing but a scam.

I get between six and twelve such calls every day, starting around seven in the morning and running through till nine at night.

To block spam calls, you have to go to NoMoRobo’s website, type in the offending phone number, describe the circumstances, and send the squib. This turns an ordinary nuisance into a time-consuming nuisance. And it’s pointless: the scammers don’t care that you blocked thus-and-such a combination of figures…their machines are constantly generating new combinations.

Even when NoMoRobo blocks a number, it lets the first ring jangle you up! So…yeah. That’s real helfpul, isn’t it? When you’re trying to focus on something — or hell, trying to take a nap! — the god damned phone jerks you away from what you’re doing, even if it’s a blocked call!

Most of the calls, however, are not blocked, because the spoofers generate many, many more calling numbers than NoMoRobo can catch.

At one point, I suggested to their alleged customer service that they should allow users to block entire area codes. They said ohhh no! That can’t be done!

Well, it sure as hell can be done, because the CPR Call Blocker does exactly that. It can be programmed to block calls from whole countries, to say nothing of local exchanges.  So either NoMoRobo’s developers don’t want to be bothered with making their system do that, or their customer service people are not altogether forthcoming.

At any rate, when I saw this fancy Panasonic wonder-phone, I thought hot dang! Kill two birds with one stone: replace the aging Uniden phones and get a built-in call blocker!

So I grab it off the shelf.

Having become ever-so-much-more wary over time, though, before opening the box and setting up this complicated marvel, I looked up the user reviews on Amazon. And then on Costco’s website.

Not so good.

A lot of people on both sites complained of poor sound quality. This seems to be a nigh unto universal issue. Also roundly hated: poor customer service and incomprehensible instructions. Ten percent of Amazon reviewers pan it with one (!) star. Interestingly, the rate is about the same over at the Costco site.

At Amazon, I figure when one-star ratings add up to more than 9%, that ain’t a happy sign.

For 8 bucks, I could buy four rechargeable phone batteries supposedly approved by Uniden. So I ordered up eight of the things, for a total of about $18 including tax…a far cry from $108 for a complicated phone system that may or may not work.

So I decided to replace the batteries in the existing handsets and hope for the best. If that doesn’t work, Uniden sells the handsets alone: it’s still cheaper to replace a few of those than to buy a whole new Panasonic system.

Apparently, if I’d just waited until the steam stopped shooting out of my ears after the Cox fiasco, I could in fact have attached my old CPR Call Blocker to Cox’s accursed modem. But I can’t find the thing now, so I guess I must have tossed it in a rage. That would be pretty typical.

It’ll cost another hundred bucks to get a new one. But at this point I’m thinking…let’s see if these new batteries hold a charge. If they do, fine: invest in a new CPR 5000, call their excellent customer service on the phone, and get them to coach me through connecting it to Cox’s accursed modem. Et voilà! Say good-bye to the NoMoRobo joke.

Schlepped the unopened Panasonic back to Costco this morning; received a fistful of money back on the card.

Now I’m going to think about this for a few days and, if I can confirm that the CPR 5000 will work, with the hated new Cox equipment, then I’ll just bite the bullet and buy another one. I know their customer service will coach me through connecting the thing to the complicated junk Cox cluttered my desk with — at least, I think they will. They post a phone number at Amazon, which I’ll call tomorrow to see if they’ll agree to do so.

Failing that?

Well, frankly, I think the only alternative is to disconnect the land line. Replace it with an iPhone for actual calling and texting, and several charged-up but un-connected cheap clamshells for dialing 911 in a pinch.

The Weirdness That Is Walmart

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So I’m on the way home from the Depot, thereinat to purchase another two gallons of liquid chlorine to dump into the re-hazed pool water. Traffic is its usual demented self.

I decide to stop at the Walmart up on Gangbanger’s way, thereinat to purchase…what? Some fruit to eat for breakfast…some cheap pasta, having run out of the fancy stuff from AJ’$; and a few other small things.

This place never ceases to amaze me. What do I find in  it?

  • Pasta, all right. Are you ready? REAL made-in-Italy-with-Italian-ingredients (altogether RoundUp-free) pasta! Yes. Just like the stuff at AJ’$, only marginally affordable.
  • A bottle of 14 Hands Cabernet, one of my favorite cheapo wines…two bucks less than I paid four days ago at Fry’s, which was already pretty cheap.
  • A ripe watermelon, truly ripe to my now very practiced eye: no doubt imported from Argentina.
  • Passels of ebony-haired brown-skinned mothers with beautiful little Hispanic children, so adorable as to die for. Long may they thrive!
  • A tired bum making his way through the aisles, searching out something decent to eat and to pay for with his food-stamp card.
  • An extraordinarily stupid woman standing near the front door hollering at the cashier, “What time does the pharmacy close?” (Walmart pharmacies, interestingly enough, shut down over the lunch hour.)
  • A weary-looking, worn cashier who replies (hang onto your hat), “There’s a sign at the pharmacy counter that says when they close.” 😀
  • A weary-looking, worn cashier who manages to perk up when I say to her, “How’re you doin’ today? You look like you’re workin’ too hard…bad for your health, don’tcha know?” We laugh. We comment on the weather. Her day improves, maybe…if only for a moment.

Ah, Walmart. Ah, humanity…

The Wages of Longevity

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So Monday I’m over at Costco with my friends whom I enjoy driving to various shopping junkets. We’re checking out and chatting with the cashier, who remarks that it’s his fortieth anniversary on the job at Costco!

Wow! Can you imagine? Working as a Costco cashier for forty years! That means he would have started in 1979. He must have started back when it was Price Club, because the first Costco didn’t open until 1983. Price Club opened in 1976, in San Diego.

We know people who work for Costco love working there. Several of them have remarked to that effect to me — in fact, when I happened to say that I’d been laid off, shortly after GDU shut down our shop, one employee recommended that I apply at Costco.

I wonder how a senior cashier’s pay compares with a teacher’s in Arizona?

Hmmm… Costco cashier salaries range from $14 to $25 an hour. That’s $29,120 to $52,000. On the high end, that’s about what I was earning in a 12-month administrative job at GDU, after 15 years in the saddle. When I was teaching there, I made about $45,000 a year.

But believe me: no one at GDU will tell you they love their job. Morale in that place hovers in the sub-basement.

On the other hand, I was able to work at home a lot. Telecommuting was not much of a problem in the particular position I had. This isn’t true of all the jobs there, but faculty positions usually require you to show up only to meet classes, confer with students, and sit through faculty meetings. As a practical matter, most people are generally “around,” and many classes meet at inconvenient hours (such as 7:40 in the morning or 7 to 10 p.m. at night). But…it’s interesting that with a Ph.D., 15 years of teaching and administrative experience, and 15 years of journalism experience, you earn about what a senior cashier at Costco makes.

Yea verily: the median salary for K-12 teachers in Arizona is $47,980; average base pay in Phoenix is $38,441. And believe me, that is not for just 9 months of work: you spend your summers preparing for the next year and whiling away your time in unpaid seminars, conferences, or teacher improvement courses. Or in second jobs, to keep the wolf from the door.

Think of that: At Costco, a cashier earns more than a teacher. With one helluva lot less aggravation.

Crazy Driver Season

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The theory that one in every ten drivers on the Arizona road is a moron may need revision. Possibly closer to the truth: one in every five. My gawd, were they out in force yesterday!

Several gas stations in Our Beloved City have run out of gasoline. In half-baked Play-Nooz stories, we’re told it’s because fuel supply lines “may” have been disrupted by the weather in the Midwest, another way of saying “we dunno.” Personally, I suspect our country’s present mis-leadership, but that’s another story. Whatever the cause, gas prices have risen by about 30 cents a gallon. Today I have to drive my agèd friends to Costco, but would rather not ask them to sit in the car through the Costco’s long lines and then sit some more while I pump gas. Tomorrow I have to schlep to Paradise Valley Mall and then turn around and traipse way to Hell and gone out to Sun City.

The car had about a third of a tank of fuel, which under normal circumstances would last another week or ten days.

However…if Costco runs out of gas, too…if Costco and QT run out of gas…hmmm….  So, I decided to make a single trip yesterday, just to Costco to fill up the tank.

Sounds easy, eh? And it would be, if we were talking about any normal place.

On the way down, I pass one of the usual road-blocks, on the other side of the street. Every route in the city is dug up. Wherever you’re goin’, you can’t get there from here. Seeing the line of stalled cars stretching westward from 7th Avenue on Bethany, I realize I can’t get home that way. So decide to go up 15th Avenue, a slower route but usually unclogged.

Two morons get in front of me on the way to the Costco, but they’re pretty harmless. Just the usual “don’t know where I’m going” and “texting on the phone” set.

Get filled up, head out, and turn left onto lovely 15th Avenue without incident.

Fifteenth, a major feeder street that runs from Gangbanger’s Way, mostly through neighborhoods, all the way down to the State Capitol area, has been adorned with traffic-harassing nuisances in the form of stupid roundabouts and speed humps. Most people ignore these: in time you learn that you really don’t have to slow down for them. The other day I saw a guy shoot down that road at about 50 mph, navigating the nuisance circles and bumps without a hitch. Most people drive about 35 with no problem.

But…yes. Or rather no. Naturally, I got a Moron of the First Water in front of me.

First hint was that the Moron slowed wayyyyyyy down as soon as it got north of Bethany Home. Then when the Moron came to a speed circle, it STOPPED.

Yes. This idiot slows so far down as to stop before entering the roundabout nuisance and then C-R-R-R-A-A-A-A-W-L-S around it, barely idling foward. About one mile per hour, I’d guess.

No, that is not an exaggeration. The chucklehead is barely moving.

Moron speeds back up to about 30, then as soon as a speed bump pops up, DOES IT AGAIN. This idiot actually STOPS and then, barely moving, C-L-I-I-I-I-I-M-B-S over the thing. Then speeds up to almost 25 mph.

This is why I don’t carry a gun in the car. I’d have blown out the clown’s tires.

Seriously: it’s NO WONDER people shoot at these fools.

We finally get to Maryland, the next east-west road, where the Moron inches into the intersection on the green. I squeeze around him, veer right, leaning on the horn as I leave the nitwit behind. This adds an extra mile to my drive: a half-mile over to 7th Avenue and another half-mile back through the ’Hood.

I think people do this kind of thing on purpose. It’s a game for some folks. And really: it’s a miracle more of them don’t get shot.

Walloped!

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So, as you’ll recall, according to my Universal Theory of Phoenix Transportation, at any given time one in 10 people on the roads is a certifiable moron. Tonight I qualified as number 10!

Headed homeward with Ruby the Corgi, my back hurt, so I was in a hurry to reach the Funny Farm. At Feeder Street NS, some cars were headed in our direction. We could get across if we rushed. It was dark. But there was a speed bump between us and the oncoming vehicles, which, even if they were traveling faster than I thought, would slow them down enough for us to make the other side before they reached us.

So we’re flying across the street and we leap for the sidewalk and trip…kerWHACK!

Goddammit. I fell flat on my face.

MAN, did that hurt.

But amazingly, nothing seems to have broken, not even the now picturesquely scraped nose. I’m sure that by tomorrow morning I’ll look like I was in a boxing match. A lump has already raised up on my chin, plus another on a knee. And my glasses are hopelessly scratched: that’ll be a $300 fix. I met several nice neighbors…

And…here’s the weird thing: the kink in the back disappeared!

Sidewalk as chiropractor…

This may complicate life a bit. Tomorrow I have to drive from pillar to post: first to pick up the vacuum and then down to the credit union to argue about whether they can accept a wire transfer via their routing number, contrary to what their manager seems to have told me. Then back here to index another slab of a client’s book. Then of course I imagined I would clean out another closet…that idea probably no doubt will be going by the wayside. Tuesday (oh shit, there’s another gunshot…down at Main Drag South. Ahhh, the lovely sounds of the city… 😀 ) it’s off to Costco with my old croneys. Wednesday, meet with a new client halfway across the city. Thursday…don’t recall. Friday: SDXB. Saturday: SDXB thinks we’re driving to Castle Hot Springs. By then, with all that gallivanting, I won’t have had a chance of getting far in indexing project #1. And #2 will still be waiting.

{sigh} One thing you had to say about San Francisco along about 19-and-aught-59: they didn’t have damn cop helicopters roaring overhead every time some perp hiccupped.

Nor did the perps do a lot of hiccuping. Not everybody and his little brother was addicted to drugs. It was actually relatively safe: I used to ride the bus, transfer to the streetcar, and walk to school, every day, at the nubile age of 12 or 13. And I was allowed to roam all over the place with my best friend, two little tomboys fishing in Lake Merced and sneaking into the Olympic Club’s golf course and climbing onto the roofs of the local apartment houses. Today “helicopter parents” won’t let their kids out of their sight…for good reason, as we’ve seen here in the ’hood.

Think of that. From Utopia to Dystopia in just 60 years.