Time Is Running Out--Choose, or Else!

I believe we are all born with a certain amount of mental energy. And if we use it up on useless things, we will not have enough left when we really need it.

In order to hoard mental energy, you have to duck some decisions. You have to decide which things really count in life and which do not. Then you take those that do not and completely ignore them.

I tried to practice this when I got a notice in the mail some months ago telling me I had to choose a long-distance phone company.

The breakup of the phone system in America is no longer amusing. It happened because some judge somewhere decided things were working too well, and so the whole system had to be broken up into itty bitty systems so we can all get 20-page phone bills.

I do not know who this judge is, but if this guy is not in the pay of Moscow, I will eat my shorts.

Figure it out. Paralyzing the other guy’s communications is the first thing you do in war.

What if people living on the East Coast saw the missiles coming over one day? Wouldn’t they call friends and relatives on the West Coast and warn them? I would. I’d say: “Hey, you better set the VCR for next week, cause you’re going to be in the basement for a while.”

But now, with the new broken-up phone system, what would happen in a nuclear emergency? We’d pick up the phone and hear: “Attention, capitalist slave-dogs! You soon will be living under the boot heel of international communism! Please deposit three rubles for the next five minutes!”

Anyway, people all over the country have been getting these notices saying they must choose a long-distance company. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, you will.

The first notice told me that if I didn’t choose a new system, I would be assigned the old system, AT&T.;

So I did what any smart person saving mental energy would do: I threw the notice away.

Then, a few weeks ago, I received another notice printed in purple ink. It said:

“Several months ago, you received a notice telling you about your new choices in long distance service. At that time, one of your choices was to do nothing and keep the easy-dialing long distance company you had then. New federal regulations say that if you don’t choose a long distance company, the choice must be made for you at random.”

The notice went on for page after page listing the choices available to me--there were 13 of them--and a slew of 800 numbers I could call to find out more information about each.

I did the smart thing: I threw it away, too.

Now, the calls have started to come in at home. They are from long-distance phone companies making me feel like a rat because I haven’t chosen one of them yet.

“If you don’t choose, someone will choose for you!” one company told me. “How can you live with that?”

But when you think of it, some of the most important decisions in life are made for us. We don’t get to choose our parents or where we will grow up or our siblings or what schools we will go to in our formative years.

Surely if those critical decisions are made by someone else, I can live with somebody choosing my phone system.

A few days ago, I got another call from a guy with a carefully prepared sales pitch telling me he offered the same service as the big companies, but for less money.

“If you went into a restaurant and they had two identical steaks and one was $4 and one was $14, which would you choose?” he said.

Do I get an appetizer? I asked.

“That’s not the point,” he said. “We are talking about two identical steaks.”

I really don’t eat that much red meat, I said. I hear it sits around in your large intestine for months and rots.

“Choose between the steaks!” he shouted. “Same steaks. One is $4 and one is $14.”

OK, OK, I said. I’ll take the $14 one.

He began sobbing. “Why would you take the $14 one? Nobody takes the $14 one when they can have the same one for $4.”

Well, they tell you it’s the same one, I said, but if you ordered a $4 steak it would probably be something the cat had used for a scratching post.

He gave up on me. He said if I continued to refuse to choose, a nameless, faceless humanoid would make this, the most important decision in my life, for me.

And you know what? I don’t care. I am going to risk it.

I have always wanted to live more dangerously. Now, I will be a free spirit. I will toss the dice. My fate will be borne on the winds of chance.

Life in the fast lane!

I knew I’d get there someday.