I am still wet even though the sand and sun are very warm. My mind is foggy and swirling and I can’t remember how and when I was washed up here on the Tahitian beach. My eyes sting from the salt and I have difficulty focusing on the form leaning over me. I feel powerless but I am not frightened. There is something about this place that exudes peace and an inner calm. I can feel hair gently brushing my throat as the human shape slides closer.
I feel like I am being touched but I can’t tell for sure, as my senses have been combined into a warm bubbling feeling. I hear a voice, sweet and melodic, of a young woman, in a foreign tongue. Then there is a second, equally as pleasant. A little giggling follows with the feeling of warmth and proximity.
Riiiiiiiiiing! What? All I see now is a blurred image of my family room with the muted plasma screen on the wall. I close my eyes again fast. Let’s get back to Tahiti now, go, go, go! I begin to melt and fade again. Riiiiiiiiiiing!
I grab my cup of Macchiato and stagger around the coffee table towards the phone on the counter. The dog is looking at my cup with enthusiastic interest. I take a swallow but the cup is almost empty and the liquid is cold. “Spkitchhello,” I say into the phone as I spit a hair off my tongue. The dog has whipping cream on her nose.
“How are you today sir?” chirps the handset.
“Fine,” I blurt as I stare into my cup.
“I’m calling from the NB Bank of Canada Canada
“There are dog hairs in bottom of my cup mixed in with the cream and caramel…”
“That’s just for you, just for today, if you sign up you will have an annual fee of only $19.99…”
“Can you get rabies from dog hair?”
“But that’s not all …”
“You mean like what, hepatitis, dysentery…?”
“…you get 10,000 bonus air miles and free car rental insurance all over North America …”
“You woke me from Tahiti just for this?”
“No sir, not Tahiti , just North America , all over North America where cars are rented.”
“Do you want to buy my dog?”
“No sir we don’t offer credit to dogs.”
“What planet are you from … Saturn?”
“Yes sir, Saturns, Toyotas, and all brands of vehicles that are rented …”
I calmly place the phone down. I do not hang up, I just place it down but the non-stop chatter continues.
I sign onto the computer in the next room to find out how to make a Lebanese letter bomb and look up the address of the NB Bank. My e-mail screen pops up and the only unopened message is about ‘Guaranteed penis enlargement for only $19.99’. I reply, using my ex wife’s e-mail address, and ask whether they have an ‘extended warranty’, pun intended. I can still hear the phone chatter in the other room. It’s really annoying me now so I go back and pick up the phone. “Alright”, I say, “this does sound like a good deal.” and I give the woman the address to mail the card to. It’s not my address – it’s the bank’s address that I got off the internet. She’s made her sale but she keeps talking. This time I hang up.
The dog is clearly experiencing the effects of caffeine. She’s still running circles around the couch on the living room. Her back legs slide out from under her at each turn but her front paws keep pumping and pumping. Traction finally gives way and she spins out of control bashing into a large vase and leaving a forensically identifiable nose print in the middle of the TV screen.
During the next week, I pay special attention to all the spam, telemarketing calls, junk mail, flyers and other invasive forms of crap I receive. The numbers are staggering. There are calls telling me I’ve won hockey tickets and all I have to do to received them is to attend an ‘information session’ on some new time shares that have been built in some hot, war-torn country. The girl on the line is particularly pushy and obnoxious so ask her to tell me what she’s wearing, in my most seductive voice. She hangs up and I tally that one as a success. I received a renewal notice from Reader’s Digest even though I stopped my subscription six years ago. I received a promotional bottle of mouthwash that bears a small certificate stating that it was not tested on animals – I am extremely relieved that no baboons were forced to gargle. During the course of the week, I get calls asking if I want to sell my house, buy a house, have my house cleaned, have my lawn aerated and have lint vacuumed out of my navel. On Wednesday, I receive thirty–two page flyer from the city explaining the proper way to recycle paper. I receive a second copy on Thursday.
Who pays for all this stuff? Clearly this is a rhetorical question, but since they’re paying it means that there are people out there that are actually so easily influenced by marketing that they can be convinced to spend their money or alter their life styles with only a little coaxing. I really have difficulty with impulsive people. Religions are founded in faith, history and culture which have evolved for thousands of years. How someone could possibly convert to a different religion based on a knock on the door and a hard sell sales pitch boggles the mind. When I am faced with this scenario, I pull a rubber glove over the top of my head and answer the door naked. I am going to state the obvious here, but if you choose this strategy, you must be absolutely certain that you know who is standing on the other side of the door. I have a scheduled court appearance next week that will further examine this point.
The door bell rings but I decide not to bother with the rubber glove thing. I open the door and am handed a free newspaper, that I don’t want, by a kid wearing a Nike hat, an Adidas shirt and Bum sweatpants. He is gone before I can hand it back to him. There is a crash from the kitchen so I dart up the stairs two steps at a time. The dog, who has now become a caffeine addict, has knocked over my cup and is slurping up what coffee was left. As I approach her, a Starbuck’s coupon book drops out of the paper and I lunge for that instead. She beats me to it and takes off back into the living room repeating a similar scene from before. There is a lot of running, loss of traction and spinning out. This time there is a forensically identifiable nose-print and blood stain on the TV but unfortunately their both mine.
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