I Am A Mushroom

After this last year of Snowmaggedon, earthquakes and hurricanes, we decided to bite the bullet and get a generator.

Oh.  Wait.  Tim decided to get the generator and I have to bite the bullet.  Yeah.  That's how it went.

So, two weeks ago, I got a call from someone named Sally who said she was from company ABC (one of the companies Tim had contacted for an estimate).  Expectant Pause.

"Okay.  And...?"  Was I supposed to burst into a round of applause complete with whistles, cheers and stomps, or would she prefer an award of some kind?

"What can I do for you?"  Sally asked brightly, obviously hoping to provoke some kind of reaction other than confused silence.

"I give up.  What can you do for me?"  Um.  Hello.  You called me!

Second pause.  Clearly, this conversation was not going according to Sally's plan.  Whatever that was.

"Uh,"  some of the perkiness left Sally voice.  "I'm calling for Sean...?"

Oh. You're calling for Sean?  Well why didn't you say so in the first place.  Now I understand everything.  Just a couple of quick questions though:  Who is Sean, and exactly how lazy and/or incompetent is he that you have to make the call for him?

"Sean is the one who sold you the generator...?"  Sally volunteered another piece of the puzzle while I was still struggling to voice my last question in a less snarky way than the version that was running through my head.

"I didn't know I had bought a generator, but now I know what the problem is,"  the light bulb finally went on, and I knew who to blame for the confusing morass Sally and I were currently mired in.  "You see, my husband must have been dealing with Sean and he thinks I am a mushroom."

"A mushroom?"  Sally echoed, sounding more than a little afraid of the answer.  I'm pretty sure that at this point, she was plotting ways to get even with Sean...ex-lax in the coffee perhaps?...for putting her through this torture.

"Yes," I answered, similarly plotting my own form of vengeance on Tim, but he would not get off as lightly as ex-lax.  "A mushroom.  He keeps me in the dark and feeds me sh--, er, I mean he obviously didn't tell me what he did."  I finished lamely.

Sally meanwhile was more than a little giddy with relief that she was not speaking with someone she would later have to tell the police interviewer "seemed a little off, but I never imagined she'd take out all those poor, poor people with her.".

"Okay, well, I think I'm supposed to set up a time to come out and install the generator," she said.

And you couldn't have led with that and saved us both this ridiculously painful conversation?  I mean, c'mon, Sally.  Work with me on this.  And what do you mean, you think?  Don't you know what you were supposed to do?  Really?  Are you a mushroom too?

Sally offered me installation as early as the following week.  Wow! I thought.  So soon!  That never happens when dealing with people in the service industry, or at least not without divine intervention or a really big payoff.   Sally, you rock!  And then she dropped the bomb.  Installation would take three days.

Three days?!?  I have to sit at home for three days?  Are you installing a generator or building a wing onto the house for this thing?  Maybe you are assembling it on site from scratch.  Perhaps the installer is legally blind and the installation instructions are written in Sanskrit.  I know, it's being put into place by a team of highly trained snails who will then turn it on, hop in, douse themselves with garlic and wine and become escargot.  Three days?  At home?

"Well, officer, she seemed fairly normal when we arrived on Monday.  We never saw the homicidal rage coming on Wednesday afternoon until it was too late."

Tim was sooo going to hear about this.  I was emailing him even as I was resignedly circling the days on a calendar like a prisoner about to enter solitary confinement.  And I don't care what anyone says, they weren't getting my shoelaces and belt.  I had to have something to keep my busy for three days.

Within an hour or so, I heard back from Tim, who had the gall, the nerve, the utter temerity to chastise me for scheduling the installation on days we would be out of town.

We will?

Yes, we're leaving on Tuesday and won't be back till Friday.

Oh?  And when were you planning on sharing that little gem?  Monday night?  Why don't you just get Sally to call me up about an hour before we take off on Tuesday and have her tell me what's going on?

"Honest officer, I never saw it coming.  I mean, sure, she muttered under her breath and maybe her eyes did circle in opposite directions, but I just thought she was a bit eccentric.  I never suspected anything like this.  Have you even found a piece of Mr. Sinclair?  No?  Not even a lock or hair or a fingernail?"

I am.  A mushroom.