Someone My Children Could Be Proud to Know

What is happening to us as a society?  We've regulated our information to the point that we can't even access it.

When I paid a utility bill this week, I realized I couldn't remember whether or not I'd paid a utility bill the previous pay day.  So, trying to be someone my children could be proud to know, I looked it up. (Because, in my experience, children do not want parents who let the utilities get shut off.)

It turned out it was the phone company I was supposed to have paid, and I really couldn't remember doing it.  I might have, but I might not have.  Since the last pay day, I've been attacked by an army of germs, which has killed one-third of my brain cells and taken another third hostage until its demands are met.

I'm still trying to figure out what its demands are.

So, I called the phone company.  Before I got to talk to an actual live person, I had to punch in all kinds of information.  You know how it is.  They had my phone number, my zip code, the name of the doctor who delivered my firstborn son, and a detailed description of my wildest fantasy.

Finally, I seemed to have run through all the options, and I got to push a number for "other options," and got a live person.

Before I could ask my question, "live person" rifled a few at me.  She also needed to know my name, birth date, and shoe size.

Then, she stumped me.  She wanted "the three numbers that come after your phone number."

"Numbers that come after my phone number?"

"Yes."

I think I laughed.  "Really?  What are those?"

"We added them," she said in a self-important tone.  "It's part of your account number."

"Okay, but I'm not looking at a bill.  I'm at work."

"The last four of your social, then."

I supplied them.

"That's wrong.  We need your husband's social."

I checked my mental files, and that one was one of the ones the germs took hostage.  "Nine seven four three?" I guessed.

"That's not correct," she said.

"Well, ask me something else."

"I can't," she said.  "I need the either the three numbers that come after your phone number or your husband's Social."

"Look," I reasoned.  "All I want to know is whether or not I paid my bill two weeks ago."

"I can't tell you that."  What bothered me the most was how much she seemed to be enjoying not giving me my information.  I am younger and have more brain cells than you, I could almost hear her thinking.  I wanted to quip back that maybe she just had less information to track in them.

"I punched in a whole lot of information before I got to you," I pointed out.  "Can't you use some of that?"

"No."  It had to be the three imaginary numbers no one, I would think, would ever know, or the few that I just couldn't, in my old age, come up with.

So, I sat there, on The Twilight Zone, wondering what I could do to get this human robot to figure out that whether or not I paid my bill is not really classified information.  She could call my worst enemy and tell him I'd made a payment, for all I cared.  She could publish it in the newspaper.  "Janean Justham paid her phone bill on September. . ."

So I sat there, feeling mighty foolish, because I might have been able to come up with my worst enemy's Social before I could access my husband's.  Old age is funny like that.  "What's your name?" I asked her.

"Tammy."

"Tammy what?"

"I can't tell you."

Of course.  Whatever her last name was, I was tempted to make up three letters to go after it and see if she could guess them.  "Okay," I negotiated.  "Will you hold while I call my husband, wake him up after his night job, and ask him?"

She said she would. And she sounded delighted to provide that level of astonishing customer service for me.

So, I dialed.  And, my husband answered.  I told him that the nice lady at the phone company would not tell me whether or not I'd paid our bill unless he reminded me of his Social.

"I don't remember," he said, sleepily.

So, there you have it.  Tammy at the phone company knows whether we paid our bill, but we're not allowed to know that information.  Since she's not too worried about us being responsible about our payment, I guess I don't really need to be, either.

Maybe that was a clue.