Here I Laugh

I'm not even certain what that title's about...but I did laugh today. I laugh most days. It's better than screaming methinks. And once, ONCE UPON A TIME, it worked miraculously well...with AT&T customer service.

Back in 1999, I was on a national tour and illegally sublet my preferential rent-stabilized mostly sex-free apartment for a year. Shhhhhh. I never met the sublettor but he was a friend of a friend and I trusted him with my utilities. (That is not a metaphor.) Little did I know he was not only a friend of a friend but a minister AND a telemarketer. Little did I know he didn't know how to connect to his watts line. Little did I know...

he left me with a $5,000 phone bill

until he was loooooooooooooooooooooooong gone with the security deposit which would only have taken care of a fifth of the phone bill but...that would have been at least a fifth of the phone bill.

(It also took me more than 12 hours to clean my kitchen but that's a completely different, throw-up in your mouth and swallow it again kinda story to be addressed another time...and possibly blahg.)

One could say I had one of those smidgens of a psychotic break when the phone bill showed up in the box I prefer to use for mail candy.* I had a couple more of these head-spinning vomit-spewing escapades every time I called AT&T because time and time and time again they would claim they could not help me. And time and time and time again I envisioned my credit rating circling the drain...along with my career.

Until...

I called and l Iaughed. Real honest-to-goodness giggling, guffawing and snorting. Ann (I soooo remember her name) sweetly asked, "Ooooh, you sound happy. What's so funny?" And I squawked, "Look at my bill. I didn't make those calls. My sublettor did. No one has been able to help me. It's awful. A ha ha ha ha ha HAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

She asked his name, went into the system, found him and the telemarketing company and transferred the bill to his name...all within five minutes and ALLLLL because I was fun.

Methinks fun trumps squeaky, screechy, squealing wheel any day.

Hail to the fun.


*Mail candy will be addressed in a near future blogue.