I’m just not the type of person who gets sick very often. While I can only provide anecdotal evidence on this matter, I firmly believe my good health is due to the fact I religiously adhere to the “doughnut pyramid” philosophy of nutrition. (NOTE TO SELF: eat two more chocolate eclairs before bed to fulfill the recommended daily allowance of vanilla goo). Despite my impeccable eating habits, some sort of evil invaders made their way into my body. And, no, I’m not talking about the Spanish Inquisition. My symptoms included coughing, sneezing, fever, chills, cold sweats, runny nose, headache, abnormally high levels of drool (while awake), irritability, disorientation, high cholesterol, itchy facial hair, consecutive bad hair days, and an unexplained tolerance of “Gilligan’s Island” reruns.

Being a single male, I have exactly two approaches to getting better. The first is to just ignore the situation. Which most of the time is really the best thing to do. After a few days of specifically doing nothing, it became quite obvious my situation was not improving. Which meant I had to switch to my alternate form of treatment– I called my mom.

I explained the situation to my mom and she drove up to Boulder one night to see what kind of medical attention the situation warranted. Even when I am perfectly healthy I don’t always know what day it is, but having a high fever did nothing to help the situation. But I do remember watching professional football, which meant it was a Sunday. Unless it was Monday. Or possibly Thursday or Saturday. I was honestly more concerned with the idea of my head exploding after doing something silly like trying to sit up.

My mom arrived and had me swallow various pills and liquids to improve my condition. Exhausted from this sudden flurry of activity, I could do little more than lay back on the couch and fall asleep. I can only imagine my mom’s concern as she watched me sleep restlessly as my fevered body tried to recover from this illness. And that was BEFORE I started rambling incoherently.

While I’m sure I had my reasons for babbling on in my sleep to my mom that we needed to go to the local grocery store to buy birthday cakes that other people ordered, I seem unable to recall them now. I think that was when my mom started entertaining the idea of taking me to a hospital. Fortunately, witnessing my wildly erratic sleeping habits is nothing new for my mom.

My bad sleeping habits can be traced back to my early teens. One of the most common dreams, besides being stuck sitting between Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh on a crowded bus heading to Istanbul, is to have an uncontrolled falling sensation. The normal reaction is to wake up, realize it was a dream, and then go back to sleep. My routine, on the other hand, contained the additional step of waking up in the morning to realize that I had pulled the curtains near my bed out of the wall.

In addition to my nocturnal redecorating efforts, I have also been known to walk and talk in my sleep. My parents didn’t really know what to do when I was wandering in the hallway at three in the morning explaining how random objects were flying out of my television set. One time I walked into my parents bedroom and sat on the corner of their bed in the middle of the night. I didn’t say or do anything—I just sat there. I don’t think this scenario is covered in any of those “how to raise your teenager” books.

I consider myself to have fairly average verbal debating skills when I am awake and coherent. When I am sleeping, however, I have yet to lose an argument. I suspect this is because A) I use facts that are only available to me, such as “there are dragons coming in the windows” or “time is moving backwards, and I have to fix it” and B) I refuse to accept the claims of other people that I am incoherent and speaking gibberish. Coincidentally, this is the same strategy employed by the Republican party.

Given my history with odd sleeping patterns, my recent experience on my couch was really no cause for alarm. I don’t really know why I sleepwalk, but I can remember everything I say and do when I wake up. Maybe my life would be easier if I actually stopped dreaming before I start moving around and talking, but I have been unable to locate my brain’s instruction manual. Until I find it, I’m stuck like this.

I like to consider myself a reasonable and tolerant individual. I know the world is not a perfect place. My newspaper does not always arrive on time and occasionally my French fries are not quite as “hot out of the deep fryer” as I might like them. These small problems in life are things that I can fairly easily overlook. When something is fundamentally messed up I have to stand up (a.k.a. turn on my computer) and let my voice be heard (a.k.a. write about it). Having said that, I call the following piece “How Qwest Annoys Me.”

The first thing to know about Qwest is they give out customer’s personal information to other companies for the sole purpose of calling me when I’m very busy trying to be asleep. When I signed up for phone service with Qwest, I gave them my personal information so they would know things like which phone line to turn on and where to send the monthly bill. As far as I can remember, they never asked me “can we distribute your name and phone number for our own profit?” Because if they did, I’m sure I would have politely turned down the offer.

Well, it turns out that Qwest has an “opt out” policy on this subject. Which means you have to go and specifically ask them to stop selling your information to other companies. I can’t imagine many people really wanting to be on this list in the first place. If Qwest adopted an “opt in” policy the list they sell would be quite a bit shorter and probably less profitable. Quite annoying, if you ask me.

Call me a bit old fashioned, but I believe that the phone company has better things to do than to keep calling me and asking me to upgrade my phone service. I am not really the type of person who pushes the envelope in this area. I’m happy with the basic functions of being able to send and receive phone calls. My attitude on this subject, however, does not seem to make Qwest very happy. Convinced I just can’t live without their latest new feature they keep calling and wanting me to upgrade. My favorite sales call occurred a few days ago when someone from Qwest wanted to sell me a service to block unidentified calls. I have to look into this feature in more detail to find out if it would really block Qwest from getting through. Maybe I’m being an idealist here, but when the phone company is trying to sell a service that keeps THEMSELVES from getting through thing have just gone a bit too far.

Maybe this whole situation is aggravated by the fact I lived in Holland for six months. My apartment, located just outside of Amsterdam, contained a telephone that to the best of my knowledge worked for the entire duration of my visit. Whenever I picked up the phone I could hear a dial tone and I was able to make a call. Whenever someone I knew called my number, the phone would ring and I would pick it up if I happened to be around. Whenever Dutch telemarketers called up trying to sell me wooden shoes or windmill time share investment opportunities…. wait a minute—that never happened. In the entire six months I didn’t receive a single phone call from someone I didn’t know. Sure, the Dutch speak their funny little elf language that nobody else in the world seems to care about, but they really have a wonderful policy on telephone solicitation.

The whole logic of long distance prefixes was pretty much thrown out the window with the introduction of “overlay” numbers. Having to dial a ten digit code to call your next door neighbor (who may very well have a different area code) defeats the whole concept. I suspect in the future we will be required to include the three digit international country code, “1”, the area code, the actual phone number followed by the caller’s height and weight, the social security number of the person trying to be reached, and the first 10 digits of Pi– “just to be safe.”

One solution I’ve come up with involves new area codes. I propose new area codes be set up making it flat out illegal for companies to make unsolicited phone calls. If a telemarketer did call one of these numbers, a special “*86” option would notify the proper authorities. This would result in the telemarketer being charged a special two dollar “user fee” that would be credited to the victim’s telephone account to compensate for the inconvenience.

I am not holding my breath for Qwest to change their annoying ways. I think my best bet its to cancel my service outright, buy a cell phone from another company, and hope the telemarketers will keep away from my new number for at least a month or two. That, or I’ll just pack up and move back to Holland.

Perhaps it is just human nature to point out the shortcomings of other people. While I’m not a licensed psychiatrist, I do suspect I feel better about myself when I can quietly point out everyone else’s faults in life. I also have this feeling I employ sarcastic witty banter to mask my true emotions, but in all honesty I can say that is about as likely as Richard Simmons not being a robot. With all these random thoughts running through my head, I decided to embark on an exploration of self discovery and document a few of the ways in which I am annoying to my friends and family. While this list does not come close to being complete, I hope it will help shed some light on some of my more interesting character traits.

Kathleen:

Since my schedule as a writer is quite flexible, I often submit to my nocturnal tendencies and end up doing things at somewhat odd hours. It is not all that unusual for me to take a shower at two or three in the morning. I don’t know how the rest of the world works, but I just can’t take a shower without singing Steve Miller songs at inappropriately high volumes. I’m not sure how well sounds carries to other apartment units, but I can’t imagine my upstairs neighbor Kathleen is really happy to be woken up in the middle of the night when I’m going on about that big ole jet airliner that is going to carry me to my home.

Brian:

In previous stories I’ve mentioned my interest in the game of laser tag. The other night I drove down to Denver to go play. I’m not sure why (wildly erratic sleeping habits), but when I got to Brian’s place I became incredibly tired all the sudden. So instead of going to play laser tag I slept on his couch for the better part of two hours while he watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?” Afterwards I drank two cans of Mountain Dew and drove back to Boulder.

My Mom:

I keep telling my mom I do not plan my life around driving her crazy– it just seems to happen that way. I do not think I caused any extraordinary amount of stress in her life recently until I quit my job as a computer programmer to pursue my writing career. Whenever we talk about my goals in life I can actually see conflict stirring about in her head. In general she tries to remain positive and encourage my creative writing pursuits. On the other hand, she has an overwhelming urge to reach across the table, grab me by collar, and shake me silly while explaining the benefits of gainful employment.

As far as my writing goes, my mom tends to enjoy my stories that are more political in nature. She hates, and I am not using that word lightly, the stories that portray me a less than favorable light. When she read about how I got drunk and made an ass of myself at Angie’s Christmas party I immediately received a phone call. While the actual words used aren’t really important, the tone of the conversation was quite negative. I know that my mom would do anything if it would keep me from writing about my personal life on my web site. Unfortunately, the sciences of hypnosis and mind controlling drugs are unable to achieve such specific objectives at this point in time.

Newfunny viewers:

Anyone who has above average spelling and grammar skills knows I am not a perfectionist when it comes to things like where to place punctuation marks and what exact letters should go in a particular word (and the order of the letters too). One alert newfunny reader (who also happens to be my sister) pointed out that I spelled Dave Barry’s name incorrectly. Which in itself wouldn’t be such a big deal—I have an exceptional talent for creatively spelling names. The beauty of the situation was that I had put a picture of Mr. Barry—with his name spelled correctly—right next to the story where I had misspelled it roughly 2300 times (in my defense I spelled it wrong with remarkable consistency throughout the entire story). My sister sent me an email pointing out my error in a tone that I would consider to be less than positive. Since then, however, I have been able to spell his name correctly a remarkably high percentage of the time.

Footnote:

While I generally don’t plug other web sites, I came up with the concept for this story after reading a web site titled
“Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.” Despite a horrible color scheme that gives me blinding headaches behind my eye sockets, this page is a wonderful collection of stories involving a British writer and his German girlfriend.