Moving Experiences

A few weeks after moving to Maryland we got our first electric bill. It was *huge* compared to what I had been paying in Illinois. I called about it and explained the situation to a customer service rep, saying that I just wanted to be sure that the amount was correct.

She told me - and I swear she sounded proud of it - "Yes sir, we are one of the most expensive in the nation. New York might be higher, I don't know."

No BS runaround there.


• A couple of years after Debbie and I split I decided to move from one apartment in Falls Church to another. Not entirely coincidentally, the new one was perhaps fifty feet from the building in which I worked.
  
  One of the arrangements I had to make was for the continuation of telephone service. I called the phone company and got a person who sounded like a middle-aged woman. I gave her the old and new addresses, which weren't much more than a quarter of a mile apart.
  
  CS Rep: "Would you like to have a new number or do you want to keep the current one?"
  
  Donnie: "Well, I've only had this one for three years, so either way I'm gonna have to memorize one."
  
  CSR, laughing: "I'm sure you're very busy."
  
  Donnie: "You're very kind."
  
  
• While packing for the move, I came across a long rectangular box that weighed perhaps twenty pounds. It was still sealed with tape, unopened since the move from Illinois four years previous. The only marking on it was the unhelpful "Computer Room Closet."
  
  I looked at it for perhaps three or four minutes. If I haven't opened this for four years, then no matter what's in it I don't need it.
  
  For safety's sake I ran through a short list of important items - birth certificate, Army discharge, etc., and decided I knew where all those things were and none were in this box.
  
  I took it down to the trash bin, unopened.
  
  Several years later, back in Illinois, I told Debbie about it during one of our telephone conversations. She was absolutely beside herself over it, saying several times "I can't believe you did that."
  
  I threw that box away in 1996 and haven't spent one minute worrying about it, but you know how things go. Several months ago it popped into my mind that I knew what the box had contained.
  
  When I moved to Chicago in 1979, my boss sent me to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for a week long seminar on Matrix Management, and the box contained manuals, reference materials, completed assignments, and a graduation certificate. So Debbie, if you should trip over this blog, now you know.