MAILOMANIA

The mail epidemic has definitely gotten out of hand. We are all being inundated of essentially unwanted communiqués and are helpless in their wake. It all began centuries ago with DrumMail. They beat out their messages in tribal codes alerting compatriots of impending disaster or joyous events. Unless the recipient was out of earshot, it worked. 

SmokeMail arrived shortly thereafter, delivering appropriate messages in billowing clouds. This medium worked just fine barring pouring rain and gales. None of these of course, ever sent catalogues.

Then came a revolution. PostalMail or SnailMail. Well, at first it was pretty slow but what would you expect with a horse? The term pony express is obviously an oxymoron. However, as the 20th century arrived with those speedy motors, mail did reach its destination within a few days or a week or two. Today, on occasion, however, I have had strange experiences such as the time I mailed a check to my doctor whose office was a mere mile away and it didn’t arrive for three months. I am convinced there is a giant hole somewhere in the heart of our great country where all the undelivered mail has been decomposing for decades. Actually, mail has surfaced decades after being posted.

My mailbox for the past several years has been packed with JunkMail which I wish would wind up in that hole. Catalogs ad nauseum from everywhere in the country selling everything on the planet, most of which no one needs, and insistent requests for contributions. Used to be that the letters requesting donations arrived in November and December when our hearts are filled with goodwill and charity. Now, it’s like the Bloomingdale’s sales. Every week. The problem, I decided, is that if you donate a check to one charity, they sell your name to all 2000 others who then send you “free” postcards of adorable animals or mailing labels all for the purpose of softening you up and filling you with guilt if you don’t remit a check.  It used to work on me but I’ve steeled myself and am now impervious.

During World War II, to help keep the morale up of our Armed Forces, V-Mail (V for victory) was born and we citizens were urged to write to friends and loved ones in battle.  A wonderful idea. It probably wasn’t much faster than plain old SnailMail but the problem was it encompassed too many “Dear John” letters.  Too bad those didn’t end up in that hole.

Another breakthrough was AnsweringMachineMail which gave birth to VoiceMail. Both terrific technologies. It’s interesting to note that when answering machines were first introduced, ATT opposed them with a vengeance. I still don’t understand why because the answering machine was unquestionably responsible for the gigantic increase in local, national and international calls. Think about it. You call Joe and he’s not home. At the beep, you leave a message. One call. Joe calls you back and you’re not home, he leaves a message. Call two. This game of telephone ping-pong can go on interminably and with every call the cash register rings at whichever company you had today, for consumers in a state of total confusion.

Now before AT&T lost its monopoly back on January 1, 1981, we had the best and easiest phone system in the world. Now, the amount of hawking by local and long distance companies, especially the ones who want you to dial perhaps twelve numbers before the number you want is enough to give you a migraine.

But progress wasn’t to be stopped. Along came FaxMail that certainly speeded up correspondence.  The upside was a huge convenience. The downside was that since messages were sent and received virtually simultaneously, response time was slashed and everyone began working faster and harder. That thermal paper intrinsic to the first fax machine was slimy, constantly curled and faded quickly but that problem was quickly solved with plain paper.

The next techno advance was BeeperMail. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, anyone who had your number could page you. That beep became so annoying, especially in theaters, they took another giant step and made those little things vibrate to alert you to a message. And there, by some miracle, was the number of the caller printed out in your hand. 

Then those techie companies invented CellPhones and its companion, CellMail. At this point, you have to read SnailMail at home and office, the MachineMail at home, VoiceMail at the office, FaxMail at one or both and CellMail wherever. We were definitely being messaged to death even before the Internet Revolution with EMail that you can receive anywhere in that tiny palm thing. Now EMail is truly an amazing medium especially for keeping in touch with friends across the country and in foreign lands. Far less expensive than long distance or international phone calls regardless of which phone company you have. Simply open up your server with a click of your finger, type your message and hit “send.“ The efficiency is mind-boggling.

It’s a perfect system when it works for sending whatever pages of serious stuff or funny jokes. But when you receive something really prurient and the boss reads it, watch out. The age of big brother is here. Since so many companies currently monitor EMail transmissions, employees really have to be on guard. One fellow I know EMailed himself out of a job when he EMailed a lurid letter that was intercepted by the boss and summarily fired.

Other Internet hazards include chat room participants who stalk and kill, credit card thefts which cost consumers and e-businesses serious dollars and agita and insidious invading viruses that are EMailed by playful sadists who screw up the entire computer. Such is our hi-tech age.

So with all this amazing technology, turnaround time is now down to seconds and the pressure is a killer. A friend who holds a high-level corporate job told me he receives between 50 and 150 EMails a day in addition to dozens of VoiceMails. Between reading and listening to them all plus attending interminable meetings, he has no time for work and puts in12 hour days at the office. It’s all incredibly fast but is it progress?  I naïvely thought technology was supposed to ease our work burdens.  Obviously wrong.

A major problem that results from all this stuff is that it’s harder to lie. Gone are the days when you could cop out with “the letter didn’t arrive,“ “the check is in the mail” or “the fax and/or answering machine is broken.” If someone wants to reach you, you’re always reachable. There’s nowhere to hide anymore. I, for one, feel mailed out. How about starting a new revolution and calling it ZippoMail?

THE JOYS OF TECHNOLOGY?

Despite the chaos rampant on this planet – enough to make even the most manic depressed, the past thirty or so years have created technologies extraordinaire which have made some of the more tedious aspects of life effortless, faster than ever imaginable and often more fun than play-dough my kind of technology. Most of these advances have been a snap for those born with the technology gene meaning all born after 1950s. Others, like me, have required healthy doses of courage and interminable patience to psych them out. However, ultimately, they have been worth every bit of agita.

In the child’s play camp falls the TV remote. A miracle. A break-through product if ever there was one. My personal favorite buttons are “mute,” and those little arrows that change channels and “off.” Lolling in my bed with my brain on hold, I delight in zapping the obnoxious and inane – programs and/or commercials – and hopping from one channel to another in search of a program geared to those above twelve. This is not as simple as it sounds. Mastering this gadget took merely minutes to master earning its inventor accolades from me known by all my friends as a tough sell.

Then take the VCR/DVD. Initially, neither anyone I knew over age fifty nor I could father its operation. My kids or course worked the damned contraptions in five minutes. Once the lack of confidence abated, I was able to pre-record. Rah!  However, this trick eluded some friends, intelligent people all, who after years of honest effort and endless explanations are still at a loss as to how to program now - or ever. I really can’t blame them since the manufacturers learned they needed a better mousetrap and thus created On Screen Programing -- much easier than reading those incomprehensible instructions.

The self-cleaning oven is another of my favorites. Whoever invented this had cleaned an oven a few times in his/her life with those smelly, skin-ruining ingredients plus too much muscle scrubbing with steel wool.  So now, all one has to do is lock the oven door, turn on the switch and wow, it cleans itself.

The electric screwdriver is anther of my pet toys. In the olden days I often needed far more developed biceps and greater dexterity to imbed or extricate a screw. Now I can switch from a regular head to a Philips in about three seconds and, with a flick of my finger, I can accomplish this chore in seconds. It’s particularly effective on screws with twenty of thirty years of paint in those little grooves as I discovered in the vent covers in my bathroom. 

The other technological joy requiring not a moment’s thought is the icemaker. Why hadn’t they though of that decades ago when I ran out of ice in ninety-degree weather and had to wait hours for the water in those trays to freeze? I’ve had an icemaker for year and still chuckle when I hear it “laying” cubes.

Food processors, mini and maxi, are other indispensable additions to my hi-tech arsenal.  Remember the arduous chore of chopping onions, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, veggies, fruits, name it.  History.

How did we ever live without Crazy Glue? Five seconds and whatever you clumsily broke is repaired including your fingers stuck together. And let’s not forget the fact that it’s heaven for broken nails. 

Then there’s the copier., fax machines (nearly obsolete today), and of course the computer.  How quickly we forget the arduous task of writing in the olden days – say the 1970s when carbon paper and whiteout were a must. Once I conquered the irrational terror of merely turning the computer on, I fell in love. Spell check, cut and paste extraordinary. However, it doesn’t like passive sentences and single dashes. But those are a snap to fix. I just tell it I’m the writer and bug off.

The modern telephone. Pure genius. No more holes for dialing, hold buttons, programed phone numbers, conference calls, cell phone and the one I most adore, the speaker. I never call anyone using it and I resent being spoken to on it by others but when calling one of those numbers answered by a mechanical voice telling me to press 1. 12. 6. ad nauseum, the speaker is a major plus. So when you’re on hold for what seems like forever, you can read all your junk mail, straighten up your desk, empty the dishwasher, etc. The other day I was on hold for tech support for twenty-four minutes and forty-two second. Obviously, I put a clock on  it.

There seem to be new gadgets daily that simply do not interest me. After all, I wasn’t born with the computer gene and my brain will hold only so much. It’s already filled.

THE ORDER IS IN THE MAIL

A friend ordered a special gift for his fiancée from one of those mail order houses. They took the order, his credit card info, delivery data and assured him it would arrive in one week. That was important because it was a bon voyage gift and she was leaving in ten days.

Of course, it never arrived and his friend flew away sans gift. Naturally, he called to find out why. Out of stock was the reason but it would be delivered the following month.  Next month he didn’t need it so he told her to cancel the order and credit his card. That should have been simple, no? No.

For three months he was billed for this never received, don’t-want-it-any-more-gift. And for three months he called their supposed Customer Service for the credit. Each time he was assured it would be on his next bill. Not.

“I don’t care when you credit it. I’m not paying it!” said he irately.

This charge was carried for yet another three months. He was more than annoyed to see it as a pending credit every month. So, finally at his wit’s end, he wrote a letter to the president of the company. 

No one called, but – abracadabra – his next bill arrived cleansed of the charge. Ah...the power of the pen. He was much too patient. He should have written after month one.

THE NON-SPAM KILLER

If you have a computer and you probably do, you undoubtedly have a spam killer. You know all that junk that appears in your computer such as free Viagra, Meet the Mate of your Dreams, incoherent email from China, millions of dollars from Nigeria (just give them your Social Security #) etc. You get the picture.

I had a Spam Killer program for a few years and was very pleased with it. It really did block all that garbage. However, suddenly, it stopped working. I had four on-line chats (those are really neat…invisible help) with the technical people to no avail. I then received two phone calls from people at this company; one could not help, the other told me he did not have the time at the moment but would call back. Wrong.

There must have been someone in this organization who could address this issue. One would think.  Amazingly enough, the second gentleman with whom I had spoken called within the week. It seems he had forgotten about me. That is a no no. But it can happen. 

Why did he finally call? Well The President told him to take care of it since I had sent a letter to him.  So he did and decided that the only recourse to correct the rebellious program was to uninstall it and send me a new CD to re-install. He did, I did and, like magic, no more problem. As I’ve always said, bitching pays. Being a polite and very grateful person, I then sent off another letter to The President thanking him for his help. Courtesy never hurts because you never know if or when another problem will surface and you have to write again.

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST

We all know you can choose your friends, not your relatives and you also can't choose your neighbors.. Sometimes fortune shines on you and you find a wonderful neighbor. Then they are those times when, happily, rarely, you find a veritable Shrew. It's the luck of the draw or like so many things in life.

Such was the case when I moved into a new apartment with a small terrace. The weekend before the move, the handyman from my previous building was kind enough to come to the new apartment to help set things up. He asked if he could bring his six-year-old daughter and I said that's fine. She can play with my six-year-old daughter. Perfect.

As he and I were doing an assortment of things and the girls were playing quietly on the terrace, the doorbell rang. Since I knew no one in the building, I couldn't imagine who was there. I opened the door and standing before me was the Wicked Witch of the East (my apartment was on East side of Manhattan) –a veritable twin of Margaret Rutherford in the “Wizard of Oz” who portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West. There she stood, about 5 feet four inches in her black dress, black stockings, black shoes, black hair, black mood. Only the pointed black hat was missing. She was truly a vision.

“Yes.” said I. “Can I help you?”

“My name is Mrs. Wolf and I live next-door. Are all those your children on the terrace?” We had a communal terrace separated by a 4-foot high wall. All those children were two.

“Why?” I asked.

“I hate children,” she responded with a touch of venom.

What a shocker. And what do you say in such a situation?

“That madam, is your problem” and I closed the door. Thus began World War III.

Our apartments were at an L to each other so if she opened her door, she could see whoever was entering mine which she did daily. My kids will warned to stay away from her door and on Halloween when all the kids in the building were trick and treating her door was off-limits. She would probably have given them a poisoned apple.

She complained incessantly to our of mild-mannered superintendent, Mr. Olson, about the dreadful noises coming from my apartment. I might add that she was almost completely deaf. She and I had one communal wall: my living room and her bedroom. One night she had him come to her apartment once again complaining about the noise in my apartment when she removed her hearing aid and placed it on our communal wall picking up every sound in the building. Needless to say there was no noise coming from my apartment. How do I know this? Mr. Olson told me.

Well this bizarre contretemps continued for three years. I thought I was a saint putting up with her nonsense but strangely, I felt sorry for her. She lived alone and claimed to be a widow.  I thought what man could possibly live with the. She had one daughter who visited perhaps once a year. This wolf was not a fun mom.

However, one morning walking to the elevator on my way to work, there she was.  Black coat, black stockings, black shoes, black hair and still in a black. As we entered the elevator, she began mumbling something about the terrible people who lived next-door. That was me. I was in no mood for nonsense at 8:30 in the morning which is not my shining hour, so I went for it.

“Mrs. Wolfe, of you don’t cut the shit, I'm going to have to lock up”

“What?” she screamed

“LOCKED UP.”

The war ended and I never had another complaint from her. I learned that turning the other cheek doesn't always work. In retrospect if the entire experience weren't so absurd, it would have been laughable.

THE MOUSE LADY

That was my title several years ago when I lived in what is known as a luxury co-op in Manhattan.  Great apartment, building and cul-de-sac street. Except one night while relaxing in my bed reading a book, from the corner of my eye I noticed something dart across the carpet. Was there really something or was I imagining it? With considerable apprehension, I read with one eye and was on alert with the other. Tricky. And then I spotted it. A MOUSE! No I didn’t yell EEK! Though I think I had a brief anxiety attack as I scurried to the house phone and told the doorman he had better race up to my apartment and catch that little bugger which he finally and heroically did. But that was only the appetizer.

Over too many months, I discovered a multitude of its roommates – none of whom paid a dime toward the maintenance. In all the apartments I had occupied in this great city, I had never ever seen a mouse. An occasional roach, sure. Who doesn’t?  But mice? Never. Pretty soon I had a mouse invasion. When I informed the superintendent of this problem, he gave me his typically vapid look and claimed I was the only one in the building of almost thee hundred apartments who had mice!  I marveled that this army of mice had bypassed ten floors to invade my apartment. True, it was a nifty, thoroughly renovated apartment, but really! Of course the super had no explanation, but then, he was the only super I had ever encountered who, I think, didn’t know how to use a screwdriver.

He summoned the house exterminator who placed tented glue traps throughout the apartment.  In every corner, closet, kitchen counter, my bed. I jumped at any audible sound. I lost sleep. I think I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I lost count of how many mice were caught in those traps and I became immune to tossing them down the compactor. The worst incident occurred when I gingerly tiptoed from my bedroom to the kitchen in my typical morning stupor and saw one dash under the foyer area rug. What to do? How to catch it?  Summoning all my courage, I located the lump in the rug and, ugh, stepped on it. I felt like a serial killer and spent the entire day totally depressed. I couldn’t believe I had actually done that.

I then became a maven on mice – not an education for which I yearned. Did you know that two mice – obviously male and female – produce +/- eighty micelets annually? And once the nest has twenty or so, they pair off and migrate creating another nest and every pair again manufactures another eighty.  Incest is not a no no in their culture. It doesn’t take a fertility expert to determine that two cohabitating mice can overrun an entire building in just a few months – and do.

I shared this valuable information with the Board of Directors. Indifference best describes their reaction since they didn’t think they had mice. Hah! Friends were aghast that I hadn’t moved out. I even conducted a door-to-door survey of my neighbors to learn if any had mice. Oh yes they did.  One young woman told me her apartment was so overrun, they were in the kitchen and on her bed!  When she complained to the incompetent super he gave her the same answer.  She was the only one with mice.

Finally, my attorney son, fearing he would have to visit me at the local funny farm, came to my rescue. He wrote a letter to every resident in the building inquiring if any had mice. A resounding yes was the response from many and all agreed that nobody was doing nothing. We victims banded together and demanded action from the Board – all in vain.

The building manager, as incompetent as the super, told me that I must have holes in the walls behind my dishwasher, clothes washer, fridge and oven allowing the little buggers entrance.  His advice was to call the plumber and plug up the holes – of course at my cost. So the plumber arrived, moved all those appliances and guess what? We found not only several dead creatures but also gaping holes in the walls that those gnawers had made since they literally eat though plaster.

The saga continues. The building manages then had me call the co-op’s exterminator directly. I thought that was his job. So I spoke to the president of the company who was convinced I was a crazy old lady – crazy yes, old no – and he sent his vice president to inspect the premises. My sixth sense told me this was a Ma & Pa Exterminating Company and I was right on. The VP was the son who knew nothing about exterminating. 

Setting the stage, I left all those charming mouse drippings where they had been deposited the previous night. This very perceptive VP agreed and said they were fresh mouse poop. He didn’t have a clue what to do.

In case you are unaware, mouse droppings look like caraway seeds or bits of dirt so people who had them scattered around their apartments were oblivious to the fact that there were mice. An amusing incident occurred with my next-door power attorney who was a new resident and rarely home. One morning, visiting the compactor, I noticed one of his brand new air-conditioners lying on the corridor floor outside his door.  He emerged at that moment and when I asked what was wrong, he said there was a very peculiar odor and thought it was coming from the machine so it was being taken to the repair shop.  I simply said: “Mice. " He said he had never seen any so I repeated “Mice.” He was obviously in denial. Unsurprisingly it turn out that he had dead mice in his walls emitting that unpleasant fragrance.  I found no solace in being right.

Finally, my son wrote yet another letter with a variety of evil legal threats to the Board. They finally succumbed and brought in a professional exterminating company to conduct an extensive inspection of the building.  Their report stated unequivically that the building was totally infested. My son and I attended that momentous meeting with the board members, the new exterminator, incompetent building manager and idiot super and. just as we were about to sit down, up popped a mouse.  It couldn’t have been better staged. And no, I didn’t bring it.

Coda: The Board retained the new exterminating company and I was thereafter known as The Mouse Lady, a title I had not coveted.