By the Numbers

Did you get yours?
I got mine.
Well, actually, I got it but I left it out, where it lay, in the driveway: as a kind of warning to anyone else who might try to give me another one.
To be honest, I didn’t see it at first, lying there, in the leaves, in its little plastic bag.
And when I recognized what it was, and that it was too heavy for the wind to blow away, I went into denial.
It can’t be that time again, I thought: didn’t we just get another one last month? I looked on top of my refrigerator, where we keep ours, and sure enough there were at least three or four big, bright yellow ones, still in their packages, gathering dust.
Time is certainly flying by, I thought.
But I let it lie there another few days more, anyway.
I was worried I’d throw my back out if I tried to pick it up.
Were they always this big?
My eyes aren’t all that bad, but they’re bad enough to make reading it pretty difficult. Not that I read it very often.
And when I do have a reason to consult ‘it’, I never know which one to use first. Besides the 30-pounder that we got last week, there’s a few ten pounders as well, and even a few minnows.
I’d like to throw them all back.
Isn’t there a pocket-sized, digital, voice activated IPod version? Really, aren’t all these phone books already obsolete?
Somewhere in this country, there has to be a house made of phone books. They use particle board to build some houses, why not the yellow pages instead.
I’ll bet if we gathered all the phone books delivered last month we would have enough to build a nice single family house. And we could donate it Habitat for Humanity. I’m not being disrespectful, but it just seems such a waste of paper, and space.
I don’t want anyone to lose their jobs over this, so maybe we could have the people who deliver these, trained to memorize every name in the book – or at least the number of every restaurant in the area. Then they could walk down the street like Town Criers: need a number, they’d recite it for you, and then you could tip them.
They wouldn’t have to know too many other numbers, besides restaurants. I have the number of my Well Guy memorized.
Maybe we could use digital technology to create personalized phone books, with only the numbers you want in them?
Maybe those civil war re-enactors could use them to shoot from their cannons: God knows that they’re as heavy as lead and nearly as deadly.
Can you opt out?
I have a feeling that if I told the mysterious them that I didn’t want any more phone books, my name would go on a list of what the frightening they refer to these days as, ‘persons of interest’. Then again, I am probably already on that list.
What about a directory of ‘rabble rousers’: I’d use that book!
Remember when it was considered unusual to have an unlisted phone number? Now most people think that it’s unusual to list your number, or foolish, or risky. Who are those people then, in page after page of residential listings? I’ll bet if you chose names from these books at random to call, half of the people selected would have their answering machines on, anyway.
Maybe they should have a separate book for people with listed phone numbers that you can be sure will not answer when you call?
Speaking of not answering, did you hear about the latest ‘offer’ from the big retail chains: they used it for the After Thanksgiving Day Sales? If you sign up, and give them your number, they will call to remind you of a big sale. Target customers could even specify what celebrity voice they’d wanted to hear.
It was sad to hear that Kermit the Frog had sunk so low. Then again, maybe that’s where the phone book people should direct their attention. How heavy would the phone book be that had only the names of those foolish enough to respond to phone solicitations?
Five pounds, ten, twenty?

Maybe this new book really has some interesting things in it?
Maybe I really can’t live without it?
Maybe it is made from vegetables and is 100% edible?
Maybe it burns clean, and produces a beautiful, long-lasting flame?
Maybe there are secret messages hidden in the lists of names that, if decoded, would show the location of a fabulous treasure or give you Brittney’s personal cell phone number?
Maybe I should rescue it from my driveway before the first big snow?