"Getting the Bugs Out"

By Jerry Zezima

I live in a wasp neighborhood. At least that’s the buzz from a couple of exterminators who came over on separate occasions to rid the house and property of all the pests that creep my wife out.

Sue, who says I’m the biggest pest of all, routinely roams the premises with a flyswatter and calls the extermination company if she sees even one little gnat.

This time she was in the living room when she saw a wasp, which she smashed, and then spotted a couple of bees trying to get in the front window.

“Two bees or not two bees?” I said dramatically. “That is the question.”

“You’re a pest,” Sue responded.

So she called an exterminator.

“Bug spray won’t work on your husband,” a pest technician named Sean told Sue. “But it will get rid of the bees and wasps.”

He took me outside — for inspection, not extermination — and showed me a bunch of holes in the ground.

“They aren’t ant holes,” Sean said. “They’re wasp holes.”

“I could never do your job because I wouldn’t know an ant from a hole in the ground,” I admitted.

“Ants and wasps are what people complain about the most,” said Sean, who dropped granules that he said would get rid of the insects.

“May I try?” I asked.

“Sure,” he agreed.

“I guess I could do your job after all,” I said after going over a small patch of the backyard with a spreader.

But I wasn’t allowed to use the sprayer, which released an insecticide from a nozzle that was attached by a hose to a backpack.

“I’ll do the perimeter of the house and spray around the first-floor windows,” said Sean, who also used a long brush to dust eaves for spiders and other home invaders.

“Has your family bugged you about getting rid of bugs in your house?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Sean said. “But they will.”

Sue didn’t bug me because all the bugs in our house had been eradicated. Or so we thought.

A couple of weeks later, she saw a spider in the bathroom. Then she saw a bee in the kitchen.

“I’m calling the bug guy again,” Sue said.

This time it was a certified service professional named Alex.

He repeated what Sean did and added that he would also spray for ticks.

“Do you know what kind of ticks don’t bite?” I asked.

“What?” Alex said.

“Nervous ticks,” I announced proudly.

Alex laughed and said, “I like dad jokes!”

“Are you a dad?” I asked.

“No,” Alex answered. “I live with my mom.”

“Does she bug you about getting rid of bugs in your house?” I wondered.

“Yes,” he said. “She’s always after me. I bring my job home with me.”

Like Sean, who used to work as a roofer but quit because he’s afraid of heights, Alex likes being an exterminator.

“I used to be a telemarketer,” he said. “That was no fun. Most people think telemarketers are even worse than insects.”

He also worked in a big-box store but quit because he had to be there at 4:15 in the morning.

“Then I worked in a car dealership,” Alex said. “I was the guy behind the computer in the service department.”

Now he gets satisfaction in helping customers keep their home and property free of pests.

“What’s the biggest bug you have to deal with?” I inquired.

“Spider crickets,” Alex said. “They jump at you instead of away from you.”

“My wife says I’m the biggest pest in the house,” I said.

“Too many dad jokes?” he asked Sue.

“They never end,” she replied.

I proved her right when I thanked Alex and said, “If we see any more bees and wasps, we’ll give you a buzz.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"Sorry, Wrong Number"

By Jerry Zezima

If Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with patenting the first telephone, were alive today, he’d be:

(a) On hold.

(b) Getting relentless calls about his car’s extended warranty.

(c) Convinced that my new smartphone has a dumb owner.

The correct answer is:

(d) All of the above.

At least Bell has the good sense not to call me — and not just because he has been dead since 1922.

But if he did call, I’d tell him about the hangups my wife, Sue, and I recently had when we traded in our old phones for the latest models, which now allow us to fall even further behind our grandchildren in technological aptitude.

I didn’t think I needed a new phone because nobody wants to talk with me. But my previous device, an iPhone 13, kept losing power and had to be recharged so I wouldn’t miss important messages from scammers and spammers, who ought to be in slammers.

I went to the phone store and explained the situation to Tushar, the very nice, smart and  — this is essential in dealing with me — patient office manager.

He looked at my phone and said, “Your battery is OK.”

“That’s what my doctor told me,” I replied.

“Still,” Tushar said, “you should consider getting a new phone. This one is old.”

“My wife’s phone is even older,” I said. “It’s an iPhone 12.”

“You both need an upgrade,” suggested Tushar.

Thus did Sue and I bring our hopelessly out-of-date devices to the phone store to exchange them for up-to-date iPhone 16 models that not only have all the bells and whistles, which are annoying as hell, but enable us to receive incessant pitches from telemarketers who can be easily blocked but not, unfortunately, electrocuted because there is, as yet, no “zap” button on the new phones.

But a problem soon developed: The transaction wouldn’t go through.

“We can’t process your payment,” Tushar said after taking credit card information from Sue, who is the family banker.

“Does that mean the phones are free?” I asked hopefully.

“It means we are charging you more,” Tushar replied with a sly smile.

He explained that a new office device was down because of a software glitch.

“There are pros and cons to everything,” he said. “Connectivity brings us closer, yet we’re far apart.”

Even with the help of the “support team,” it took four days to solve the problem.

For the inconvenience, Tushar waived the activation fee.

“You should charge the company an inactivation fee,” I suggested.

Complicating matters was a frustrating but entirely predictable human issue: Neither Sue nor I could remember key passwords that were needed for Tushar to do whatever he had to do once the software mess was fixed.

So we had to make up new passwords (I forget what they are) before deciding what color phones we wanted.

After intense deliberation, I chose teal.

“That’s the color of my phone,” said Tushar.

“You are my inspiration,” I told him.

“As long as I’m not your perspiration,” he said.

Sue picked purple.

Then we had to choose colors for the tablet and the watch that came with the deal.

“I don’t wear a watch, so I’ll take the tablet in blue,” I said.

Sue picked cream for her watch.

Unfortunately, there was another issue: My phone was delivered to the house, but Sue’s phone wasn’t. Neither were the tablet and the watch.

“The one who does not pay bills got a phone and the who does pay bills did not,” Tushar said when Sue and I returned to the store.

Eventually, everything worked out, all the devices were delivered, and Sue and I are finally up to date.

I only hope that wherever he is, Alexander Graham Bell is getting relentless calls about his car’s extended warranty.

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"Crowning Around"

By Jerry Zezima

When you break a tooth that you’ve already had a root canal on, you root for your dentist to get to the root of the problem.

That’s what Dr. Anthony Fazio did on one of my molars, which he expertly repaired during a two-part procedure that was, I am happy to report, painless.

As Dr. Fazio said, “I didn’t feel a thing.”

The dental dilemma began while I was eating a bowl of soggy breakfast cereal. It’s a good thing I wasn’t gnawing on a steak bone or a piece of peanut brittle, which might have shattered the tooth and sent shards down my windpipe.

Then the choke would have been on me.

But I noticed that a small piece of my left bottom rear molar — Tooth No. 18, if you are scoring at home — had broken off.

It’s the same tooth I had an emergency root canal on a year and a half ago while visiting my older daughter and her family, who live 300 miles away.

I called Dr. Fazio and made an appointment with office manager Lisa Rugen, who also is a dental assistant.

A week later, Dr. Fazio peered into my mouth and said, “You have some nerve. Fortunately,” he added, “the nerve was removed when you had the root canal, so this won’t hurt a bit.”

Then he went to work, pulling off the broken crown and putting a band on my tooth.

“I’m sorry it’s not a band of gold,” the good doctor said, reminding me of Freda Payne’s 1970 pop hit, which began playing in my head. “It’s more like a ring around the molar.”

Then he stuffed cotton in my cheek, making me feel like Marlon Brando in “The Godfather,” and applied a resin-modified glass ionomer, a substance a lot like spackle, only not as tasty.

“You’re starting to drool,” the dentist pointed out.

“There’s no drool like an old drool,” I said as Lisa suctioned out the streaming saliva.

“You have a choice for your new crown — porcelain or metal,” Dr. Fazio said.

“If I pick metal, could I be hit by lightning?” I asked.

“It would be shocking if that happened,” he replied.

Porcelain, Dr. Fazio said, is sturdy but could break, like my old crown, which was made in a dentist’s office a few days after my root canal.

“Whatever kind you choose will be made in a lab,” he said.

“Which one?” I wondered.

“Dr. Frankenstein’s House of Horrors,” Dr. Fazio deadpanned.

“I’ll take metal so I can show my mettle,” I said.

“It won’t show because it will be in the back of your mouth,” said the doctor, who had applied a temporary crown to hold me over until my next appointment.

Two weeks later, I was ready for round two.

“You know the drill,” Dr. Fazio said.

I nodded and opened wide.

He didn’t need a drill but instead used a diamond bur to smooth out my molar after applying a viscous liquid called polyvinyl siloxane, or PVS, to make what I must say was a very good impression.

“You burned through two burs last time,” he said.

“I guess diamonds aren’t a boy’s best friend,” I noted.

Dr. Fazio described PVS as “very expensive Play-Doh.”

“Plato is my favorite Greek philosopher,” I said.

“He molded me into the man I am today,” said Dr. Fazio, who let me watch the Three Stooges while the PVS dried.

“This isn’t the one where they’re dentists, is it?” I asked nervously.

“No,” he replied. “This time, they’re plumbers.”

At my last appointment, after the new metal crown came back from the lab, Dr. Fazio put it on my molar.

The crown fit perfectly and felt good.

“And it won’t break,” he promised.

“Great job,” I said. “It’s a crowning achievement.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima