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Toughening Up

My home town is having a special election on Tuesday. Tonight at precisely 6:11pm, my phone rang:

Me: Hello?

Telemarketer Lady: Hi, I'm with the Republican party, and I'm calling about Measure E.

Me: (politely) Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not a Republican --

Telemarketer Lady: (click)

In retrospect, maybe I should have said, "Oh, how interesting," and pretended to be a Republican for as long as I could, thus tying up valuable Republican party resources just before a critical school bond referendum. Unfortunately my Mama and Papa didn't school me in the brutal Darwinian tactics of street-level political combat. Instead, they schooled me in answering the phone politely.

Perhaps this is the essence of our problem.

And on another front, M'ris is waging psychological warfare. I make an innocent reference to "Fiddler", which has the unfortunate side effect of embedding a few of Fiddler's songs and catchphrases in her head. So M'ris retaliates by trying to make me associate Trinity with Christopher Walken. Yuck! Again, see? Underhanded, vicious street-level combat, for which I am totally unprepared. So the question is, does this deserve a response? On the one hand... an eye-for-an-eye leaves the whole world blind. On the other hand... it's just this kind of namby-pamby thinking that lets Republican Telemarketer Ladies just, like, walk all over people. But on the other hand... no. No! There is no other hand!

Posted by Evan Goer on Jun. 02, 2003 at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

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