Sunday, July 6, 2025

"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Thus did Sue and I bring our hopelessly out-of-date devices to the phone store to exchange them for up-to-date iPhone 16 models that not only have all the bells and whistles, which are annoying as hell, but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


Sunday, June 29, 2025

"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


Sunday, June 22, 2025

"The Golden Boys"

By Jerry Zezima


Thanks to the wonderful values instilled in me at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, where I graduated magna cum lager, I do not (as yet) have a criminal record.


But I do have a happy marriage because my wife, Sue, also went to St. Mike’s and recently accompanied me to our 50th reunion, where we saw dozens of cheery classmates, reminisced about our crazy antics and met the college’s new president, Dr. Richard Plumb, a gregarious and impressive man who not only listened politely to my stupid jokes and outlandish stories, but kindly refrained from revoking my diploma.


The reunion was a golden opportunity to spend time with our great friends Tim and Jane Lovelette. Tim was the ringleader behind the best pranks pulled by the notorious Class of 1975.


On the advice of my attorney, who is in jail, I can’t go into details, but I can say that the high jinks sometimes involved live snakes.


Tim married Jane, who went to nearby and now closed Trinity College, in 1974, between junior and senior years. They recently celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary.


“Jane says I’m better than nothing,” Tim told me.


“I told Sue that I’m like crabgrass: She can’t get rid of me,” I said.


“Sue hasn’t had to put up with you for as long as Jane has had to put up with me,” Tim said, noting that Sue and I have been married for only 47 years.


But Tim and I are still the picture of immaturity, even though we couldn’t repeat a prank we pulled at a previous reunion by sneaking into the pictures of all the celebrating classes.


This time, we didn’t pull it off because it was raining and photos of classes that graduated in years ending in zero or five were moved to the chapel, where we might have been struck by lightning. Not only that, but we were late for our class photo.


“Maybe they can Photoshop us in,” I suggested.


“They probably Photoshopped us out of the ones at that other reunion,” said Tim.


We also appeared in a photo at a previous reunion holding a Saint Michael’s banner — upside down.


“That’s when you were voted Alumnus of the Year,” I reminded Tim.


“You nominated me,” he recalled.


“If they only knew,” I said.


The highlight of the 50th reunion was the Golden Knights Dinner, where two memorable things happened: I asked the president of the college to dance and our class photo was retaken — with me and Tim in it.


As we were finishing our meal, which was delicious, President Plumb came over to our table and urged us to get up and dance. I got up, went over to him and said, “Would you like to dance?”


“Wouldn’t you rather dance with your wife?” he wondered.


Instead, I danced with Terri Selby, the school’s associate vice president for institutional advancement, who not only could be on “Dancing With the Stars” (I’d be on “Dancing With the Stiffs”), but did a fabulous job in coordinating the reunion, which honored 10 classes.


The next evening we attended the P-Knight Party, where I met Mike the Knight, the school’s costumed mascot, so named because the athletic teams are called the Purple Knights.


“Are you a good Knight?” I asked. “I had a lot of good nights when I went here. I can’t remember most of them.”


I also was happy to see so many nice people, including two fellow journalists: classmate John Kennedy and his wife, Mary Ellen Klas, who didn’t go to St. Mike’s but fit right in.


At the Farewell Breakfast the next morning, I thanked President Plumb for a wonderful weekend and for seeing to it that all the “Wanted” posters of me were taken down.


“The statute of limitations has expired,” he assured me.


As we were leaving, Marybeth Sonski Marquardt, a member of the Class of 1980, took a photo of me, Sue, Tim and Jane. Tim and I were holding a Saint Michael’s banner — upside down.


“A fitting way to end the reunion,” Tim said.


I nodded and stated the obvious: “We’re still crazy after all these years.”


Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima