Fox Dreams

I saw a fox once at a game park designed to instruct folk on the habits and lifestyles of the wildlife that used to be there before the highway came through. The fox was in a large cage with an illustrated placard in front describing what it ate and what it did in the winter. There were some beavers nearby with their own placards, and caribou and a black bear. All these creatures were separated from each other by a chain link fence, and from the viewing public by a moat. There were a few trees in the cage and bushes and rocks and a den carefully designed by a wildlife biologist to simulate a home the fox might once have chosen for itself. It had even been given a companion to share the den with. Everything was provided.

The fox was at the back of the cage when I saw her, pacing along the chain link fence on a well-worn path as she must once have done in some woodland, stopping from time to time to sniff at a rabbit run or scratch under a fallen tree that might yield a plump vole. Always wary, watchful for the many dangers she shared her home with, lynx, wolves, dogs, hunters.

She would scamper along a hedgerow today on the lookout for nests of partridges or pheasants that might harbor an egg or a chick for supper. At the end of the hedgerow is an open field. The fox hunkers down, hidden by brambles, and surveys the vista for a while, sampling the perfumed summer air with its freight of damp grass and fallen leaves. Finding nothing amiss she lopes off across it to a copse beyond, where there is a stream. Safe again in the undergrowth, she slows her pace, stops for a drink, and finally seeks out the cool, musty darkness beneath a familiar stump to rest. Tomorrow she will go up the wooded hill on the other side of the valley.

Then that terrifying day, a moment’s inattention or a single wrong decision, and the trap was sprung. Struggling and snapping in the net, strong hands bundled her into a truck. Terrified and confused by the sharp smells, loud noises, she crouched in her dark cell until she was brought at last to this place where she can live a long comfortable life with her assigned companion without danger, worries, or care. Raw meat and vitamin supplements arrive on schedule twice a day and fresh clean water dribbles constantly into the concrete basin near her warm, dry den where her companion is sleeping.

Such a lucky fox. So why does she spend her days pacing back and forth along the chain link fence and her nights dreaming of voles?

Stream of Consciousness

There was a small Post-It on the ground next to my car in the parking lot.  I nearly stepped on it when I got out of my car.  It was a bit dirty because somebody else had stepped on it before I got there.  I leaned over so I could see what it said.  “You are awesome,” it said.  If somebody had given me a PostIt telling me I was awesome I would have it cast in Lucite and stuck to the fridge with a magnet.  Or at the very least enshrined in my wallet where I could bathe in its glory two or three times a day.  Who could so carelessly throw such a priceless artifact on the ground for strangers to step on?
Maybe the doting parent of some child who had received 80% on a spelling test had rewarded the unwilling scholar with this little yellow attaboy and was even now inside the grocery story buying sweets to reinforce this appreciation.
It was an odd day anyway, full of surprises, starting early in the morning when I heard a tumult out in the pond and discovered that the source was a family of otters that was guzzling down fishes at a great rate. This explained two observations that had piqued my curiosity: first that the muskrats that had been much in evidence all summer had suddenly vanished, and second that I had never seen a fish in the pond larger than a credit card.  I stood out there in the dewy grass in my pajamas watching my visitors porpoising through the cattails and squabbling with each other behind the shrubbery until they finally oozed off over the far bank and vanished down toward the creek.
On the other hand, it might have been the child who left this little billet doux for its mother, stuck to the coffee pot, say, or the bathroom mirror.  Someplace where she was sure to find it before she got into the car and discovered that this same child had left a half gallon of butterscotch ripple ice cream on its side on the back seat of the car two or three days ago under a towel and forgotten it and now it had melted and escaped its cardboard confines and what had not been absorbed by the foam padding of the seat had bonded to the velour upholstery in a rapidly discoloring pad about the size of any bottom that might ever seek to reside there, an error that the child just discovered this morning when it went out to look for its bicycle helmet and noticed the smell.  That would explain why the note had been thrown to the ground right next to the rear door of some vehicle.  It might also explain why it had been stepped on.
Then on the way home I passed by that place at the top of Audet’s hill where they used to sell really nice corn, but I hadn’t seen their corn sign up in years.  They seemed to have given up edibles entirely in favor of chrysanthemums which I have no great need of.  But now there was the corn sign again, so I stopped in and got some.  And some beets since I was there. And then on my way out through the thousand chrysanthemums I noticed an enclave of peonies.  Always on the lookout for peonies that are not pink I had a quick look to see what there was and by miraculous good fortune there were several Karl Rosenfelds described on the internet (which does not lie) as “deep crimson.” So in one serendipitous visit I got 2 fine, red peonies and a compelling reason to clear the nettles out of the far end of the flower bed.  Not to mention a plate of corn, which, to be honest, was a bit disappointing.
But then it might have been delivered with a smirk by somebody who had carefully noted the progress of another family member through an entropy storm during which the participant had tripped over the dog, flinging spaghetti over one whole quadrant of the kitchen, then slipping on a meatball and falling into the table causing a cascade of tossed salad, chocolate milk, and merlot along with a scatter of small items like action figures, Tabasco bottles, spoons and such, then while windmilling for balance, still with a firm grip on the once full plate of spaghetti, depositing tomato sauce in colorful streaks on the ceiling, fridge, and remaining walls before finally regaining a solid upright position.  Surely such a performance would deserve at least a PostIt note.
And when I finally did get home and got a chance to look through the great wodge of mail that had been stuffed into my mailbox with such force that I had to winkle it out one envelope at a time until there was finally enough slack to move a catalog, there was an actual letter.  While it is certainly true that my memory is not what it once was, I can clearly remember those distant times when getting a letter was, if not routine, then at least unremarkable.  Yet there I was down there in the Shoreham Post Office lobby with a slithering armload of catalogs and demands for money from a dozen or two non-profits looking down in astonishment at an actual letter that some distant person had actually written to me and then put into an envelope and paid 44¢ to mail.  It gave me an odd feeling of time travel.
I like to think, though, that this was a note left by somebody for their lover, stuck to the wrapping of a small box or a nice plant and that this little scrap fell off while they were giggling together there in the parking lot, their arms around each other right there on the painted stripe between the cars.

Why I Write

The therapeutic value of writing takes several forms.

First there is the actual connection of a pen with paper. A fountain pen is best for this, and a nice smooth heavy vellum. You can lose yourself in this process, the troubles of the world falling away as the ink flows onto the paper and finally forms the loops and squiggles that convey “Worcestershire Sauce.” For best effect the W should be a tangle of swirls and eddies with a trailing banner that extends halfway across the line. It is a proud concept and should be rendered with elegance and dignity. It should lift the spirits.

For commonplace things such as “eggs” and “shoelaces,” simple script will do, but done slowly, feeling the almost imperceptible hiss of the pen as it forms the uprights and descenders. A short letter to your old auntie who barely knows what email is, bless her, should occupy about a third of your mind with thinking of things to say about the weather and your cousins, and the rest of it with the sensual pleasure of covering a nice piece of mauve paper with pleasing patterns of spikes and loops. It is a Zen-like process and a tonic to the soul.

Second there is the purgative effect of loosing a well-deserved blast of scathing ill-humor at the phone company, or the newspaper, about unsatisfactory service or the moronic or unscrupulous actions of some public servant. A really good head of steam can be developed if both can be demonstrated. Such compositions can have a number of positive effects. It is a good idea somewhere in your letter to make some reference to Myrmidons or Horatio at the bridge or the Augean Stables so as to let the buggers know that you are a person to be reckoned with. You will therefore probably have to brush up on your classics in preparation for the project and this in itself will broaden your mind. In rare cases you may even achieve redress for your grievances, but don’t count on it unless you have solid grounds for legal action and have made this clear in your letter. In any case simply putting a stamp on such a document and dropping it in the mail is a proven way to lower your blood pressure up to 20 points.

Third, writing things down enforces a rigor of thought and logic that is often lacking in speech. For example, in 1994 the Appalling Mr. Bush spoke thus: “Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.” Would the Pretender to the Throne actually have said this if he were writing it all down? Surely not, not even He, who later correctly observed, “Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.”

And finally there is the alchemical property of writing that can transform your personal crises into comic opera featuring airborne cream pies, hilarious pratfalls, and tumbling clowns. You may start your piece overwhelmed by the tragedy of your life, tears coursing down your wrinkled cheeks, steeped in the knowledge that your life is effectively over and nothing remains but this, your suicide note.

So you set the cup of hemlock down on your desk, blow your nose and start to compose your final jeremiad. By the time you get to the part where a family of skunks had moved into your wrecked car before the tow truck could even get there, a wry smile has crept across your puffy red face.

And when you reach the part about how your faithless lover nearly brained himself by tripping over his damned stereo system and falling face down in a heap of his precious bloody Guy Lombardo disks, breaking a good half of them, and his reptilian nose to boot, you are beginning to feel downright perky. And before you know it you notice you are aching for a cup of tea, so you pour the hemlock into a potted fern, go out for a quart of milk and by the time you get back you realize you needed a new car anyway, and what could you possibly have seen in that jerk? And you should have fixed that step last year. So you stow your tearstained outpouring under a pile of magazines and check what’s playing at the CinePlex.

How to End a Conversation

Back in the golden era of travel, back before lateral movement on the planet became a nightmare of lost luggage, missed connections, and creepy security goons, I had the great good fortune to take a train from British Columbia to Montreal. This was a respectably long trip involving several days of sitting, interspersed by trips to the dining car, where you sat anywhere there was space and had a pleasant meal on nice plates with strangers who were on no hurry, as well as to the bar car, which opened early in the day.

It was at this civilized convenience where I found myself seated one afternoon next to an old fellow with an amiable face and a weakly bubbling drink. We exchanged the obligatory where-are-you-going-where-have-you-come-from remarks and then quickly discovered that we had nothing else to say of any remote interest to one another.

Just when I spotted somebody coming into the place whom I had enjoyed talking to the previous day he declared “I have 14 grandchildren.” I smiled vaguely. “Six of them live in Halifax.” He reached for his wallet. My heart sank. Visions sprang to mind of blurry snapshots of sticky moppets or family photos where one cousin was indistinguishable from the next. Imagine my surprise when at last he found what he was looking for and showed it to me with some pride. It was a page ripped out of a small notebook with a list of names on it. He gave this to me and while I was looking at it he explained where each one lived. “See, Tom and Mary and Patrick, they're my daughter Eleanor's children. They live in Halifax. And here, Hugh and Sally...” and so we made our slow way down the list.

Finally I managed to give back his list and was formulating an exit strategy when he started in on a detailed biography of each one, their favorite sports, their school projects, their piano lessons and funny sayings, their summer camps and Christmas pageants, their ailments and triumphs and food preferences. I was frantic to get away, but couldn't think of a credible excuse: phone call? Don't think so. Someone at the door? Nope. Late for an appointment? Nope. Finally I really did have to go to the bathroom so I broke in on the biography of the hockey buff from Manitoba, excused myself and fled.

Since then I have made a study of breakaway lines and techniques. As a public service I offer up my findings here so that others may be spared:

1. Cough a lot. Then say the doctor said it’s probably not contagious.

2. Break in with a desperate expression and ask where the nearest toilet might be.

3. Stare fixedly at a point just above the person’s left ear. Back away slowly.

4. Start stroking their upper arm while moving your face closer to theirs in rapt attention.

5. Ask, “Do you like spiders?” while reaching for your purse.

6. Look over their shoulder towards, say, a door, and shout “Oh, my God! They’ve found me!” Then dash off in the other direction.

7. Pick your nose thoughtfully.

8. Laugh at inappropriate times.

9. Whenever possible, return the conversation to the subject of your aunt’s skin problems.

10. Pull out a comb choked with cat fur and start to rearrange their hair.

11. Reach inside your clothes and scratch, murmuring, “Pesky critters!”

12. If you have not said anything yet, at your first opportunity say something in a foreign language. Make one up, if necessary.

13. Pull out your wallet containing at least 20 photos of your pets. Starting with the first, describe all its habits and illnesses in minute detail.

14. Ask how much money they make. If they should, inexplicably, tell you, then ask about their husband’s/wife’s income. Then move on to their children, uncles, and so forth.

15. Smile vaguely, point to a window and make a long statement in a foreign language. Russian is good.

16. Look deep into their eyes, lean forward and solemnly ask "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior?"

17. Belch long and loud. Do not smile.

18. Gaze searchingly, longingly at your oppressor for a count of ten. Then say "You are so beautiful - may I give you a tattoo?"

19. Launch into an extremely detailed account of something like a bit of computer code or anything else that interests you. Explain everything. Don't stop for breath.

Using these suggestions as a starting point, develop other deterrent methods suitable to the circumstances. Be careful not to use a method that might attract the interest of your assa ilant. Do not, for example, use #16 with somebody with a stack of Watchtowers under their arm, or #18 with a Hell's Angel.

The Fact and Fantasy of Growing Old

We are surrounded by perkiness, apparently an affliction primarily of girls, but a lesser number of older women as well as men of all ages. It manifests as a chirpy tone of voice, a vacuous smile and an unshakable conviction that its practitioner is a fascinating conversationalist. It is also associated with the lamentable delusion that those lacking these symptoms are in some way infirm if not clinically depressed, and need to be snapped out of it one way or another.

I dread my biannual trip to the dentist, not out of fear of dentistry in general or my dentist in particular but rather because the first phase of any such visit is half an hour at the mercy of a perky young thing, whose name might be Tiffany, wearing a smock with puppies on it who is apparently unable to spend a single moment free of light-hearted commentary on food, dogs, her children, other people's children, the weather, today's political scandal, something that happened on American Idol, amusing anecdotes involving almost anybody, the shocking price of gasoline, and any of a hundred other topics that crash through her mind like a trapped Dragonfly in a doomed search for the exit.

I tried once just to file the tumult away as mere background racket, like bad music in another room, a meaningless annoyance that could just be ignored. It worked pretty well until, after a few blessed moments of indulging in my own thoughts, I noticed that all sound and motion had ceased. Then I noticed that Tiffany was giving me a good hard look. Clearly I had missed something, something that required a response, and now Tiffany was annoyed. I tried to look cheerful and attentive and vocalized something that I hoped was sufficiently vague that she could read into it whatever she wanted. Unconvinced, she went back to work with greater than average energy and thoroughness with one of those diabolical hooked things they use to clean the plaque out of the very marrow of your bones. Which is how I discovered that it was necessary to listen to these monologues at least well enough to respond appropriately as needed.

In another memorable instance, my ancient cousin, Chrissie, and I went to a chop house in Burlington with the idea of eating, perhaps, a steak and a salad and discussing this and that. A quiet evening for a couple of old dolls with bad eyesight to reminisce and gently gossip. So imagine our dismay when an eager associate (I believe they are now called) with a metal thing through her eyebrow and a skirt barely long enough to cover her pubic hair slid onto the bench right next to us and, with a kilowatt smile through perfect teeth announced, “HI, MY NAME IS CAROLINE AND I WILL BE YOUR SERVER THIS EVENING!” Then she slid a couple of menus to us as if they were secret messages from Chinese intelligence. Then she propped her elbows on our table and counted off the day's specials on her long, blood-red nails. “CAN I BRING YOU A DRINK WHILE YOU'RE DECIDING?” she trilled. And here she counted off all the beers they had on tap on her lurid claws. Being the bolder of the two of us, and having heard of none of the beers on the list, I ordered something completely at random, Chrissie had the same, and we were briefly left in peace.

When our beers came we instinctively moved closer together for safety, but the Lioness merely flashed us another kilowatt and left us. Then we picked out our food and waited. And waited and waited, wondering whether our lioness had been devoured by some larger predator, but finally she came, we ordered, our food arrived, and we were eating it as old farts often do, slowly, methodically, with many rest periods filled with conversation. Our Associate had an uncanny knack for sensing when we had hit a really interesting place in some story and she would materialize at that moment, crouch down so as to be at eye level and inquire “IS EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT? DO YOU NEED ANYTHING? HOW'S YOUR SALAD? OOH GOOD!”

She did this at least twice, apparently not having considered the notion that we might have called her over if we had found a Band-Aid under the steak or a spider in the salad.

It was never made clear whether she thought that, old and decrepit as we clearly were, we were also stone deaf, although how she thought we were communicating is hard to guess, or whether she always trumpeted like that to everybody. In any case, the volume of her remarks was not so much the issue as the delivery, which took the form of the sort of relentless cheerfulness often espoused by well-meaning nurses aids conveying information of any sort to one of their elderly charges. A jolly, happy Mickey Mouse voice announcing “Time for our bowel movement, Millie,” or “Your daughter was crushed under the wheels of a train this morning so she won't be in today, Mitch” or “I'm sorry you seem to have run out of money, so we have to throw you out into the street now, Maud.”

Here's what worries me: I imagine that time has passed, I am feeble and half-blind and evil-tempered and installed in some place that employs nurses aids. And one day one of these moppets rustles up to me there in my wheel chair and snatches away the Dorothy Sayers with the torn front cover I am reading for the third time. Then she loses my place and bleats for the tenth time that week “C'mon, Debby, you don't want to read that gloomy thing again – let's go down to the common area and play bingo.” And then I imagine gathering up the last dregs of strength left in my porous old bones, and springing up out of the wheel chair and grabbing the miserable wretch by the throat and choking the bumptious life out of her.

This is where my fantasy ends as I lose interest after this happy ending. But if there is any lesson to be taken from this story it is this: Do not tell me what kind of day to have.

My New Life

An open letter to all my dear friends, old and new, valued colleagues, classmates, co-workers, neighbors:

The month of July has been overwhelming to say the least.  I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I received an email on Independence Day from Mr. Ulf Van Anderson from the Cyber Lottery in the Netherlands.  As Mr. Anderson explained it, “The online electronic-raffle draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 250,000 international emails accounts picked by our Electronic Random Selection System (ERSS) from an exclusive list  However, no tickets were sold. After the automated computer ballot collection, your E-mail address emerged as a winner category ‘A’…” This means that I won €1,000,000!  That’s something like $1,450,000!  Exchange rates are very variable, of course, but that is a whole lot of money, and all I had to do was tell them my name, address, phone number and a few other trivial details. I could get a new lawnmower! The check hasn’t arrived yet, but these things take time.
Then the very next day I got an email from FedEx saying that they had a parcel for me which was being held up owing to some little procedural detail.  They didn’t explain why the email message came from Oman, but they did mention that the parcel contained a bank draft for $2,100,000 and a letter from my colleague in Ghana where the parcel was waiting for me. All I needed to do was contact them by phone in Ghana or by email, and give them a few personal details and a handling fee amounting to $210, and they would have the parcel in my hands within 24 hours.  I confess I did not respond quickly to this as I do not know anybody in Ghana or even anybody who has been there, or anybody who has $2,100,000 to give me, but then I figured, what the heck.  That’s a pretty good return on $210.  I expect the check to arrive any day now and I guess I should give some thought to what private island to buy.
At about the same time I got this sad email: “My name is Muhammed Azeem, Am the CEO of Al Muhad Contracting Co., in United Arab Emirate. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer and i have less than two months to live. I have been sick for almost a year now it has gotten worse. I want you to assist me to dispatch my wealth to a charity organizations. For helping me, you will receive 30% of the money.” Maybe he got my email address from the FedEx people in Oman.  He didn’t say how much money we are talking about here, but he is bound to be rich as Croesus.  He said to respond to a Japanese email address, so I guess he is getting treatment there, and is probably too sick to deal with this sort of thing, poor man.
And then the next morning I got a message from the Obama Foundation offering me $500,000 just as soon as I supply the usual details.  Well, this surely must be a trustworthy offer since President Obama wouldn’t dare lend his name to anything that wasn’t on the up and up.  It is a bit worrying though that he would be using a bank in the UK rather than one here.  Are our banks headed for the cliff again?
Then, within 24 hours of this I got two more tempting offers:
From Hong Kong: “Hello Friend, I am Mr. Si-Wan Park, manager on deposit and remittance in Woori Bank,Hong Kong.; I have a sensitive, confidential brief from Hong Kong and I am asking for your partnership in re- profiling funds ($15,557,210.00 USD).
What I require from you is your honest co-operation and I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you and I from any breach of the law. Please accept my apologies, if I have encroached on your privacy without prior notice, keep my confidence and disregard this email if you do not appreciate this proposition I have offered you.
All confirmable documents to back up this fund shall be made available to you, as soon as I receive your reply via my private email (parksiwan01@hotmail.com.hk ), I shall let you know what is required of you.

Regards
Si-Wan Park“
While it’s true I have no idea what Mr. Park is suggesting, still $15,557,210 is a pretty enticing lure – how could you go wrong just finding out? And then there was the second one, again from Ghana: “On behalf of the United Nations Organization, We wish to inform you that the payment Committee in-conjunction with the Overseas Credit Commission has been mandated to compensate all the outstanding  Foreign Investors in the West African Region this quarter of the fiscal year 2011, your email and Particulars were discovered as next on the list (Category "A") due for payment of US$14,500,000.00 {Fourteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars} Only.”  So I guess this must have something to do with my mysterious benefactor who gave a $2,100,000 check to FedEx for which I needed to supply name and address and so forth.  And here they were, asking for all that information yet again.
Unfortunately it seems possible that something might be wrong with this latest remittance, as I soon received yet another message from Ghana:
“There is information I think might interest you. First kindly confirm if you are the owner of this email address.
I am Mr. Ken Solomon, I work with foreign remittance department with a bank here in Ghana. I do not know if  am talking to the right person, But I will like you to confirm if you are the owner of this email ID. But somehow I am not comfortable and too sure that I am communicating with the right owner of this email.
If you can prove that you are the owner of this email ID, then I will furnish you with the information that I have for you, when I am convinced than I am talking to the right person and will proceed with you.
I am taking this preventive measure because I do not want to talk to the wrong person because of the sensitivity of the information regarding the issue.
Other details will be forwarded to you as soon as I am convinced that I am communicating with the right person,”
While I was mulling this over, I received a message from Moammar Gaddafi’s second wife who got my email address from Moammar’s address book.  I can only imagine he got it from Muhammed Azeem, that poor wretch with esophageal cancer being treated in Japan.  Anyway, Mrs. Gaddafi proposes that she send me $40,000,000 that she has stashed away in an Asian bank somewhere.  Then I will see to its investment in sound businesses in exchange for 30% of it.  That would be $12,000,000.  Fair recompense for an afternoon’s work, I say.  By and by her son Alaa will come over and I am to help him set up a business.  And all she needs to get this moving is the same information that I have been handing out to anybody that asks from all over West Africa and the middle east.
In similar offers, both humanitarian and commercial, I have been offered

·     £3,000,000 which amounts to something like $4,800,000 by a pathetic Greek woman who said: “I have decided to donate this fund to you and want you to use this gift which comes from my husbands effort to fund the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans, destitute, the down-trodden, physically challenged children, barren-women and persons who prove to be genuinely handicapped financially.”

·     30% of $19,500,000 by Mr. Song Lile, a credit officer at the Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong to “effect a transaction”

·     $15,000,000 by Mr. Chu-yu Soong, a retired operations manager of the Bank of China, Malaysia to pretend to be next-of-kin for a dormant account

·     $2,500,000,000 by a Finance Director of some bank in Lagos who says that it is there in my name and somebody name Newman Lazarus is trying to get it and whoever comes up with the $185 processing fee will be the lucky winner

·     Some substantial slice of $70,000,000,000 by Hashim al-Adly, brother of the former Interior Minister of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak who pilfered every dime and squirreled it away all over Europe.  My role would be to receive the stolen goods and launder it.

·     £12,400,000 ($20,000,000, more or less) by Mr Roy Hill to provide respectability for a scheme which boils down to robbing the estate of somebody who died intestate and 35% of whose assets are offered to me.  This is very similar to the above-mentioned proposal of Mr. Chu-yu Soong, leading me to wonder what Asian estate laws look like.

·     And finally, a stirring proposal by yet another Pitiful Rich Person, Sister Mrs. Melina Komol from Comoros Island who is circling the drain and wants to give me $4,500,000 “for the help of orphanages home, christian schools, widows, the less privilages and churches for propagating the word of God, according to my desire and my late husband before his death.”

To make a long story short, during the month of July I have been offered, by numerous people I don’t know, in various capacities, in places I have never been, something like $2,596,256,815, offset by $395 in fees.  This does not include the philanthropic and cancerous Mr Azeem from whom I am expecting numerous millions or the larcenous Mr. al-Adley whose munificence I am expecting in the billions.  I’ll be worth more than a drug cartel.
And so, when this gush of money starts pouring in, which should be any day now, I will have to put my old life behind me, buy new clothes, spend a month at a fat farm, do something with my hair, learn how to behave on a yacht, and how to address heads of state.

I’ll miss you guys.

Polls

Every time I hear some solemn commentator proclaim that 57% of Americans prefer apple juice to green tea, say, or would prefer to take a bus to work rather than travel by horse-back or whatever other choices could conceivably appear in our daily lives, I hark back to those terrible days before I ponied up $5.95 per month for caller ID. Back in that time of dashed hopes and indignation when the phone rang, I would drop whatever I was doing and dash for the nearest phone, hoping that the next voice I heard might be somebody I might actually want to talk to. Occasionally my prayers were answered. But way too many were telemarketers of one sort or another with a liberal sprinkling of people wanting to explore my preferences in men's clothing, confectionery, travel destinations and other goods and services on which I have a very weak and changeable opinion or no views at all. By the time I had disengaged from these interruptions, I had completely lost my train of thought on whatever I had been doing and as a consequence had no choice but to shout at the cats or split wood.

One memorable poll concerned M&Ms. I had come tearing up from the basement to answer this call, so when the annoying young thing asked if I could spare a couple of minutes I agreed since I was all sweaty and out of breath anyway. Then she explained in breathtaking detail that the M&M Corporation manufactured M&Ms with which I was no doubt familiar, and that up until now the colors of these things were yellow and orange and red and brown, but now they wanted to modernize and upgrade their image by adding new colors. Now that she had talked herself out and I had caught my breath and was ready to hang up she got down to the nut of the problem.

“How often do you enjoy M&Ms?” she asked. “Every day? Once a week? Once a month? 4 times a year? Never?”

“I dunno,” I replied, “every now and then I guess.”

“Would that be Every day? Once a week? Once a month? 4 times a year?” She was not to be put off. I cast my mind back over my M&M-eating history and calculated that the last time I ate M&Ms was last Halloween, so I guessed “Twice a year.”

“What color would you like to see in your next bag of M&Ms, Blue? Purple? Green? Or Beige?”

“I like the colors the way they are.”

“But if there were another color, which would you like best – Blue? Purple? Green? Or Beige?”

“I don't care. Anything would be fine.”

“But which would you like best - Blue? Purple? Green? Or Beige?”

“Blue!” I told her, since that was the first on her list, and it just popped into my mind.

Then we moved on to my second favorite color, after which we changed our focus to what brands of jeans I had heard of and then some other matter every bit as trivial as these.

By the time I finally was allowed to hang up, I had taken a begrudging interest in the proceedings. I was amazed that somebody out there was prepared to pay no doubt big money to find out if I had ever heard of Dockers, and what color Halloween candies I might like. And I was imagining some grotesquely overpaid flunky giving his M&Ms presentation up in the executive suite and concluding with “And we polled more than a thousand people and found that 73% prefer blue M&Ms, and so, gentlemen, we suggest that you retool the Atlanta plant to include blue M&Ms, a million dollar investment well worth the expense.” Based on the choices of people just like me, who were trapped into committing to something they couldn't care less about, at a time when the chops were just beginning to smoke or the resident toddler was just about to get the lid off the Drano.

Then of course there are the polls that come in the mail. They are mostly political in nature and on the last page you are encouraged to contribute $20, $25, $35, $55, or Other to the organization asking the attached vague unanswerable questions. The multiple choice questions run to such deep and thoughtful matters as Do you think that the United States Congress is composed primarily of self-serving idiots? Answer: Yes, No, Other.

And of course the ever-popular issues-based questions such as Do you think it is wise to squander another trillion dollars we will have to borrow from China to invade yet another distant oil-bearing nation nobody can spell? Or Do you want to see an army of godless bloodthirsty heathens sweep across Our Great Nation, raping our daughters and peeing in our flower beds? Both of these questions are gathering numbers for the same thing, of course, but now one side will declare that a clear 80% majority is against it while the other side will present its 80% in favor statistics. Then they will glare at one another, a vote will be taken and whichever side can promise the largest profits for some large industry will win.

So next time you hear some congress person or political commentator saying that 76% of the nation wants [insert issue du jour here] ask yourself where did they get that number.

Meanwhile, remember that 68% of American citizens east of the Mississippi River, believe that Caller ID is the greatest technological achievement of the 21^st century.