Encouragement For Today from a Total Jackass

"If life deals you lemons, why not go kill someone with the lemons (maybe by shoving them down his throat)?" -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handy


I just had the following phone call with someone. My blood pressure is coming down now, but for a few seconds there I could feel a vein pulsing in my temple.


Me: Can I help you?
Caller: Yeah, I have this neighbor, and she, uh, has this car, in her garage, it’s been there for quite a few years, and I have this license plate – well, it’s been expired since last year, but I was hoping to transfer it to this car, and she was going to sell it me, apparently it was a relative of hers, and what I’m trying to figure out is how much –
Me: I’m sorry, who gave you this phone number?

(I need to mention our office no longer has a public phone line – neither do any of the other branch offices in our Department, and it’s because it simply takes too long to answer questions like this, too much time away from assisting the public – people who’ve taken the time to actually come down to my office. So I’m immediately irate, because SOMEONE in the community has our phone number – probably they got it from a car dealer, or friend of someone who works for a car dealership – and has been giving it out to more and more people in the last month.)

Caller: Uhh…(long, long pause.)
Me: I need to know who gave you this phone number.
Caller: I…uhh…

(Now it’s obvious to me at this point from listening to his lack of response that he knows he shouldn’t be calling, and that if he names names, whoever the person is who DID give him our number is going to get into some kind of trouble.)

(Did I also mention this guy doesn’t sound like he’s twenty years old? More like he’s in his fifties or sixties…so I’m a little ticked that he’s acting this way.)

Caller: Well, I, uh, looked it up.
Me: No, I need to know WHO it was. This number’s not listed.

(Now I’m completely infuriated, there I’ve said it – the point of this blog entry, my overreaction – infuriated because one of my least favorite people to deal with in ANY situation is somebody who won’t give you a straight or honest answer; and I have to deal with FAR too many dishonest people, even in a town as small as the one I work in.)

Caller: (Silence.)
Me: Okay, listen, I need the name of the person who gave you this phone number, because the next thing I’m about to do is dial star-69 to find out your phone number and give it to the police, so they can open an investigation and help me figure out who --
Caller: Heh, heh, sir, you’re scaring me a little here, I’m trying to give you the name of the person if you’ll just let me –
Me: Okay, I have pen and paper in hand and I’m waiting for a name.
Caller: Uh…
Me: Okay, that’s not a name, are –
Caller: No, no I’m giving it to you! Let me see, I called this phone number (he gives me a number) and then I called this other number (he gives me a second phone number) and they gave it to me.
Me: Okay, that’s still not a name. Are you saying it was Mark? (a name he had mentioned at the beginning of the phone call.) Is that the person?

After a little more prodding and a few more questions, it turned out a local business had our phone number (not a car dealer, by the way) and I ended up calling that office and giving them an earful for three minutes.

And the point of this entry:
I intrigue myself – not because I can be so obnoxious to people on the phone, but for two other reasons:

1) I feel so bad about behaving so poorly on the phone that, after I hang up, I spend the next twenty minutes in my office away from the counter, because I am somehow afraid the next customer that’s going to walk in the door will be this guy, and he’ll get to see face-to-face the jerk who was just so demeaning to him on the phone (no kidding, this is what’s going on in my mind. I’m not afraid of the guy – he sounds anything but intimidating -- and I’m not afraid of getting into trouble at this point, because he’s the one who’s not supposed to be calling me.)

and…

2) My overreaction to this guy is so over the top that what positive result could have come from me acting like such an idiot? So I found out the person’s name who gave him our number – great, nice going, genious, you’re a real Sherlock Holmes. Maybe the CIA should hire me for the next round of Guantanamo interrogations, or the Iraqis could hire me to work at whatever complex will replace Abu Ghraib, because apparently I’m so good at making people feel bad.
I am completely ashamed of the way I just acted, and yet it’s done. I can’t take it back.

So how is this ‘encouraging’? What good do I see in this?


I went into my office and picked up my Anne Lamott book “Traveling Mercies” that I’ve been reading for the past few weeks, and read a story from a point in her life several years ago when she was going through a period of chronic flu. Her son was at the age when he was continually picking up flu bugs from school, and they kept passing the sickness back and forth.

She’d finally had a brief period of good health, then woke up one morning with a flu whose main sympton was a migraine-bad, splitting headache.

She was going out to get the newspaper, squinting against the bright sunlight, when a friend drove by who was recently diagnosed with stage-four metastatic lung cancer that had spread to his brain – and of course, he was ‘coping’ with this beautifully, though she makes it sound like he is the sort of person who would never have used that word to describe himself. She talked about how handsome he still looked, driving around with the windows rolled down (they lived in California) and how he was experiencing life to its fullest, savoring every moment. She even said he was diagnosed with this life-threatening disease that in turn had allowed him to live a disease-threatening life. Very powerful stuff.

And finally, this next part is what struck me. She commented– to him – on how badly she felt with her aches and pains and how she just wanted to hang herself because she felt so bad and she quoted him as saying this: “Sometimes colds and flus are harder to handle than cancer…You’ll be better soon. God, what a day!” And with that, he drove away.


And after reading this, I thought, yes, I believe this is true, I believe in this. That sometimes the small things that you have to struggle with in life are far worse than the big things; that the Grace of God gets you through the big things not because they’re not big, but because you’re not afraid to ask for Grace, and that if you just asked for it with the small things, then THEY’D be easier to deal with, they’d be even smaller. That it’s okay to have to struggle with stupid little things like this, to make mistakes you didn’t think you’d make again as an adult, to re-learn the hard way the lessons you learned when you were younger.

Just make sure you re-learn them and move on.

I essentially decided to let myself off the hook – not that I didn’t want to go back and change the past because I did, and not that what I did wasn’t wrong, because it was. I’m not minimizing it, because that isn’t the point. Somehow, though, when I really think about it all, I am able to, I guess, forgive myself. I know that seems asinine, self-centered, all of that, but there it is. I’ve said it.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, as the book title goes.

Follow Up:

Most of what you’ve read from above I typed right before I went to lunch.

So I get up from my desk, put my coat on, grab the Anne Lamott book from my desk, and head out the door.

And as I leave the office, for the one and only time probably all morning, there’s a little traffic jam so to speak at the front door of my office, with two of us going out, and two people coming in. And a guy holds the door for us, and both I and the lady in front of me say our "thank you’s" as we walk out, and he replies with something like "sure.”

And no, I’m not making this up, it’s HIM. THE GUY. I was 90% sure of it the second I heard his voice as I walked outside of the office and the door closed.

I was 100% certain as I thought about it, standing there outside my office.

So I get about twenty yards down the sidewalk, and I don’t know what made me stop – yet I DO know what made me stop, really – and I turn around to head back into the office to apologize.
I open the door and go in. He’s poverty, and no I’m not trying to be rude - I know him, I’ve seen him before, he’s been in my office a dozen times or more. He walks with a limp, mild paralysis on one side possibly from a previous stroke, wearing comfortable but somewhat threadbare clothes, poor dental work, poor plain and simple, and I’m feeling like everything about him contrasts with me – younger, dressed in a new sweater I got for Christmas, new blue jeans, dress shoes, soft cotton jacket I received from my wife for Christmas (which I rotate with the hooded sweatshirt I received from my brother and sister-in-law for my birthday – apparently, I need a lots of jackets.)

And so I tap him on the shoulder and say, “Hi, did you just call a few minutes ago?”

Now, you’re thinking this is the touching part of the story, when he says yes, and I say, I’m so sorry, I just wanted to apologize for my behavior on the phone a little while ago, and I’d go on to explain why I got so upset, and he’d say that’s okay, and music would start playing like in a greeting card commercial, the kind of music that reassures you that everything is right and true in the world, violins and cellos and maybe a harp, and then we’d even hug and school children would walk by my front door holding hands and an older couple sitting in two seats nearby would tilt their heads toward each other and smile knowingly.

That’s what was supposed to happen, I really was planning on telling him ‘I’m sorry.’ But of course, life couldn’t work out that way. It wouldn’t be NEARLY as amusing for you, reader…

Instead, the guy turns in his seat with a deer-in-the-headlights look as he realizes I’m THE ONE, the crazy maniac on the phone that just pushed him to name names, to sell out his friend to THE MAN, now leaning in, a mere thirteen inches from his terrified face, and he stands now to face me.

“Uh, no!” he replies. “It wasn’t me. Besides, you can’t call here – they don’t even have a listed phone number!”

Well, at least he got the message…even if I had to verbally beat it into him…