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my settings |
[trifle] |
Our cellphones, ourcellves. normal. On my normal setting I am a white male heterosexual employed by Coldwell Bankers of Tacoma, Washington. I enjoy television and beer and my subscription to Maxim magazine, which I won as a consolation prize at a local golf tournament. When on normal, I am trapped in a loveless marriage to Jen, my wife of seven years, and make frequent clumsy passes at my secretary, Traci, who fantasizes about suing me for sexual harassment but doesn't have the energy. silent. My eyebrows are furrowed and I've been brooding for hours about God and war and social injustice. What else is new? I'm on silent. I withdraw into my bedroom and listen to Joy Division on headphones; at dinner I refuse to say grace, and my mother rolls her eyes. "He's on silent again," she says to my step-father, whose head bobs in that patronizing way of his. Asshole. I slink upstairs to my room and silently punch my fist through a wall. meeting. Can we touch base for a minute? I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. We've got to roll up our sleeves, break out the elbow grease and burn the midnight oil. Because we're not going to win this one by swinging for the fences, people. Success is not a journey. It's a destination. And remember "think outside the box"? Well, news flash, gang. There is no box. outdoor. Sun on my face, wind in my hair, stripped to the waist and I'm mowing the lawn. My weathered red bandana is soaked through with sweat, and I still have a half-acre to go. Welcome to life on the outdoor setting, where life is an endless day of catch in the warm, warm summer. When the grass is cut and the lumber chopped, and the little ones have tired themselves out and fallen asleep, I'll reach into my cooler and retrieve an ice-cold beer. And then I'll tip back my weary head and drink it, outside. pager. When I am on pager I will beep loudly and from deep within. Call my name and I will beep ferociously, transcendently, as if in communion with a higher power who speaks only in high short stabs of sound. (To enter a callback number, press five.) My beeps are haunted and mournful, wistful echoes of the beeps that came before. A human being, a human beeping. When you're finished entering your number press pound, and watch as my beeping turns to weeping and I collapse in a heap, spent and paged. |