Holding Pattern

“Your call will be taken in the order it was received!” How many of us have heard that annoying recording? I am writing this with the phone tucked under my ear, having been on hold for the past 31 minutes waiting to speak with someone regarding an insurance issue. What makes this even more aggravating is the fact that this is the third department I have been shuffled off to. I swear people just pass the buck and send you anywhere, as long as they don’t have to deal with you.

On my first call I was directed into an automated system, upon entering every conceivable piece of information; name, ID number, date of birth, address, phone number, what I ate for breakfast, I was transferred to a customer service representative who proceeded to ask me all the same questions. After my interrogation she tells me that I need to call a different number, where again I sat on hold for over 20 minutes. Another round of questioning by yet another snippy representative resulted in yet another transfer to another department!

It has now been over an hour that I have been…hold on…I think I am about to be connected to a human…

…Can you believe it?! I was transferred to another recording saying that “due to high call volume, they can’t take my call right now, so call back”…are they serious? I think my blood pressure just went up! I’ve wasted the best part of the morning in a holding pattern!

For the most part, I am a pretty easy going person but I must confess that there are two things that drive me insane, one is being stuck in traffic and the other is being put on hold, especially for extended periods of time.

Well, I’m taking my now cranky, high blood pressured self outside, in the sunshine, and when I have relaxed, I will go back inside and repeat this act of futility all over again!

A Memory of Springtime

Every spring when the Forsythia starts to bloom, my memory drifts back to springtime many years ago.

When I was eleven years old, I learned to drive. My friend Hannah’s parents owned a farm and we used to drive an old pickup around one of the pastures and oh what fun we had! Well, my dear Mom had never learned to drive and wasn’t really sure if she wanted to, but when I was old enough to get my Learner’s Permit my Dad and I convinced her to get hers too. For myself I wasn’t too worried about the actual driving but I had to learn all the rules of the road, so Mom and I studied together. Mom thought she should go to Driver’s School but my Dad thought he could do the same job, so every evening after dinner he would take Mom out for a lesson.

Let me just mention that my Dad was not someone you wanted as a driving instructor, this I can tell you from my own experience of driving with him. He had a way of making you so nervous with his constant warnings of the traffic ahead. Anyway back to Mom…

It was a lovely spring evening, I was on dish duty as Mom and Dad headed for the old Plymouth in the driveway. The nightly driving lesson usually lasted about half hour resulting in Mom coming in the house muttering something like, “Never again!” Well this particular evening, I had finished with my chores and decided to walk outside and watch Mom drive down the street. Our house was three houses down from the corner, where a neighbor’s giant Forsythia bush had recently blossomed in her front yard.

Dad’s car made a certain noise and I could hear it coming. Walking to the end of the driveway I looked up the street…just in time to see Mom take the corner too sharply and plow into the Forsythia, and…keep going…right back to our house!

After Mom had calmed down and Dad plucked the remainder of Forsythia branches from the hood and bumper, he went to speak with the homeowner, and assess the damage to the bush. At the time, my parents didn’t know the person who owned the house as the property had recently sold and the new owner was in process of moving in. As it turned out, no one was home, and the damage, luckily, was not much more than a couple of tire tracks in the lawn and a few broken branches.

By now, the sun had set, so under the cover of darkness, Dad returned to the neighbor’s this time armed with a wheelbarrow, rake and shovel. He repaired the lawn and fixed the Forsythia to almost perfect condition.

A few days later, Mom met Sally, the new neighbor and as time went by, they became the best of friends, even sharing a good laugh over Mom’s mishap. They remained friends for many, many years but after the Forsythia ‘fiasco’ Mom never got behind the wheel again.