This all started with Mom's move to the retirement community, which uses the evil cable company monopoly for phone service instead of using the evil phone company monopoly. Mom, bless her bumpy little head, wanted to keep her old phone number. (“I've had this number for 50 years!”). That was our phone number when I was a kid, when we had a party line and the first two numbers were actually letters, standing for ALpine, our telephone exchange. So, of course, Mom wanted to keep her old phone number. But therein lies the problem. That phone number belongs to the evil phone company monopoly. In order to move (port) the number over to the evil cable company monopoly, you (meaning me... that is, I) had to go through a lengthy third-party verification process to prove that yes, we really did want to move this phone number over to the new company, even though it meant some dire things could happen in a power outage (which of course we had the next day, requiring my 86-year-old mother to search around on hands and knees in her new office to find and reset the cable company modem).
As I waited for the beeps and shouted “Yes!” periodically into the phone, I reflected on the way technology screws with us. You see, I did all this last week: called the cable company, listened to the hold music, got the third-party verification, recorded all the appropriate responses after the beep... and for a few days, it almost seemed like it worked. When Mom called me, her good old Alpine number showed up in caller ID. I thought, maybe there is a god!
But then, it slowly became clear that no, apparently whatever god there is cares nothing for telecommunications. In a twist of pure communication bedevilment, Mom could call out on her new cable company phone line, but no one could call in. In other words, the old number was stuck half in, half out of some port somewhere in a bank of computers, where I am pretty sure the cable company and the old phone company were fighting over who would get to have it. It's mine! No, confound you, it's mine!
I think it's Mozart, some classical crap by Mozart, that plays between during the hold time between the cable company and the third-party verification software. On my speaker phone, the volume swells and fades in a most annoying fashion, making me hate classical music more than I already do. (And no, I don't like country music, either, just so you know.)
Maybe you can tell by my snarky tone that I'm harboring some resentment. Yes, it's true. I wish it weren't, and I'm implementing all possible rituals to divest myself of said resentment up to and including small critter sacrifice, if that seems called for (millipedes have invaded the basement). In the meantime, I'm declaring a telecommunications moratorium. If you want to talk to me, send me a damn letter.
I'm not even going to tell you what happened with Mom's cable television. Imagine everything that can go wrong. Multiply that by ten.
