The Answering Machine

As we get older it becomes increasingly more important to retain our inner childishness. There is an innocence, an ability to be open to joy, and a knack for seeing the good side in people which accompanies a sense of childishness. It is a quality found most often in children, who don't know any better, and those elderly who have learned enough to appreciate it.

The trick, however, is to maintain this as one of many aspects of ones personality. Childish behavior is a bit like food coloring -- The tiniest bit will permeate into other areas of your personality. The tiniest bit can greatly alter your appearance to the outside world.

So, keeping your heart young without having others see you as a complete buffoon becomes a rather complex endeavor. In truth, maintaining this balance is something that I have, rather recently, failed at completely.

Let me tell you the story of the doctor, the answering machine, and the screaming dinosaur. I'd make it an Aesopian fable, but the only morale would be: "don't do things that Ed does", which is something any regular reader of this blog knows anyway.

I have a dinosaur puppet. It is small, green, and you put your hand up its nether regions to make its arms move. In fact, I would imagine placing your arms up anything's nether regions would induce wild arm waving. More unique to this puppet is a small button on its left toe which, when pressed, causes the dinosaur to emit a great dinosaur-like roar.




ROAR! ROAR!



A few weekends ago, for my birthday, I was given a new "modular" phone system. You know, a base station and some satellite phones for use in areas of your house where a phone jack is missing. So, out with the old, in with the new, we needed to take down our old, faithful answering machine base station and put this new, fancy answering machine in its place.

This required, of course, a new answering machine message. I recorded one, it was a bit dull. It didn't really introduce the drama, the intrigue, the general giddy quest for the unknown that people experience when they call our house. In short, we needed something better to coax a message out of our future callers.

Enter... the dinosaur. The roaring, flesh-rending dinosaur puppet so terrifyingly pictured above. A few laughs later and the following message was on our machine:

Hi! You've almost reached Ed and Linda! Please leave your *ROAR* *ROAR* What was that? *ROAR* *ROAR* Oh God! Oh No! He.. *ROAR* *ROAR* Help! Somebody save my! Augh! Augh! *ROAR* *ROAR* It has my leg! *ROAR* Help! *ROAR* *ROAR*
< beep >




Hilarity ensued. What the hell, it was a weekend, we would record a new message later on. Besides, most people who would call us know we are crazy anyway. No harm done.

Amazing, isn't it, how one can forget to re-record such a message. Linda called me at work today with two pieces of information:

1. My doctor's office called this afternoon and left a message giving me the time of my follow-up appointment.
2. We need to change the answering machine message.

Oh dear.



*ROAR* *ROAR*

-Ed