Voice Maul

I picked up my favorite blue pen from my desk on Thursday afternoon and noticed that the clip had come loose.

Now how in the hell did that happen, I asked myself.

And then I remembered. I had broken the clip earlier that morning when I threw the pen down on my desk in a burst of rage.

I know I have anger management issues, but this time I had excuse for my Berserker routine--honestly. Well, sort of anyway…

I had been unable to reach my auntie all morning. She’s staying at her summer home in Massachusetts and we have a routine where I call her every morning before I leave for work.

On Thursday morning I got the voice mail, which happens occasionally when my aunt’s out for a walk or can’t get downstairs in time to pick up the phone.

I left her a message saying that I’d be leaving soon. Often she calls me back before I go out the door, but not this time.

Okay, I thought, no big deal. I’ll call her from the bus stop, which I did. And I got the voice mail again.

By the time my bus arrived I was going into full on lunacy mode and my crazed imagination was conjuring up an asylum’s worth of worst-case scenarios. She's all alone in a rural area. Who knows what kind of freaks are roaming around the woods? I called a third time.

“Marie,” I whispered frantically. “You have to call me back soon or I’ll going to call the police!”

The ride into work was a morbid affair and I felt sick to my stomach as I entered the lobby of my building.

For A Good Time Call

When I got to my desk I realized that I didn’t have the names or numbers of any of my aunt’s neighbors, which is ridiculous seeing that she and her husband bought the place in Seventies.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to call the cops.

Only I didn’t know my aunt’s address. That sounds crazy, I know, but it’s the truth. I’ve been going there since I was in high school and yet I never attached a number to the place. It’s just…my aunt’s house.

I got the address off the Internet, grab my trusty blue pen, and started to write the address down. Only the goddamn pen didn’t work.

And that’s when I slammed it down onto the desk.

I told you had an excuse…well, sort of, anyway.

I called the police department in my aunt’s town, told the dispatcher my story, and prayed to God I’d hear good news very quickly.

It was probably about 20 minutes before my cell phone rang and I was speaking with Sgt. Perkins of the Cummington Police Department.

He said my aunt was fine and that he had in fact woken her up when he parked his patrol car into the driveway.

The phone service was out in a large part of the area—including my aunt’s house--and I had wrongly assumed that a working voicemail meant a functioning telephone. This probably explains why I don’t work for the phone company.

I thanked Sgt. Perkins profusely and then gave praise to Almighty God. I felt as if massive chains were falling off my body and I could breathe normally again.

It turns out that I had overreacted. But I had chosen a course of action, followed through on it, and resolved a scary situation as quickly as possible.

And it only cost me one busted pen.