So last night Mr. S and I are relaxing after a long weekend (in the bad way; we found out on Friday that he missed out on yet another permanent job and will have to continue temping for the foreseeable future) watching a movie. The phone rings, and a woman asks for Mr. S. I forget my usual response of “Who’s calling, please?” to fend off telemarketers and simply hand him the phone with the comment, “Some woman.” He says, “Hello? . . . (starts laughing) You’re calling on behalf of GEORGE BUSH?” At this point I start laughing. Mr. S is about to go off on one of his riffs – and sure enough he doesn’t disappoint me. “Lady, you picked absolutely the wrong house to call!” He tells her that he’s been basically unemployed since 2001, and he blames the entire stinking mess of the economy on Bush. He tells her that when Bush was elected, he had no opinion about him because he didn’t really know anything about him, even though all of his friends were telling him what bad news Bush was. And yet in the past three years Bush has proven those friends right and then some. He’s off in the kitchen ranting, and I am still laughing, amazed that she’s apparently still on the line. He tells her that she should be ASHAMED OF HERSELF to be working for Bush. I think it was at this point that she said something like, “Well, thank you for your time and you have a nice evening, sir.” And he said (half laughing by now as well), “Well, YOU have a nice evening TOO!” Click.
We were still laughing uproariously when, about a minute later the phone rang again. At this point I should explain that because we have different surnames, we also have dual listings in the phone directory and often get duplicate telemarketing/survey/charity calls. I looked at Mr. S and said, “Do I dare answer it?” He says, “Sure, go ahead!” So I do. “Hello?” “Hello, is Scarlett there?” Same chirpy voice. “Speaking.” “Hi, this is Patty So-and-So and I’m calling on behalf of President Bush . . .” I’m laughing again. “Didn’t you just speak to my husband??” A flustered pause while she checks her screen or whatever to see that the number is the same. “Oh my! I sure did!” “Well, you can just copy what he said and put it down for ME! Goodbye!” Click.
We must have laughed for a good half hour. We were mighty disappointed not to have gotten it all on tape, even after checking the answering machine, which had picked up at first before I got to the phone and sometimes records the conversation when that happens. Oh well. He had only been getting warmed up . . . didn’t get into the lying, or “No Billionaire Left Behind,” or the whole Iraq mess, or gay marriage, or the trampling on people’s civil rights. When I joked about the call probably being a kickoff to the convention, Mr. S groaned that he hadn’t thought of that and would have liked to ask if she knew how many people had been arrested in NYC yet for exercising their right to FREE SPEECH!
Anyway, that brightened up our evening considerably and we went to bed still chuckling.
This morning Mr. S went off to “work” to see whether, indeed, there will be any work available for him in the upcoming months. I assume they found something for him, as he didn’t come right back home. At 9 AM, his usual break time, the phone rang, and I assumed it was him calling to give me an update. Nope. I picked up the phone expecting my darling’s voice and instead heard a recording of Der Führer himself! Yucko!! He wanted me to be sure to fill out my absentee voting forms . . . and that’s as far as he got before I hung up the phone in disgust.
Trust me, Mr. Bush, I will not be an absentee voter on Election Day. But thanks for calling! Not.
