44 Chapters About 4 Men - BB Easton Page 0,77
Never Bothered To Learn) Telecommunications
FROM: B. B. EASTON
TO: KENNETH EASTON
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1:15 P.M.
SUBJECT: RE: FRENCH IMMERSION
Why, Mr. Easton, that was so formal. I appreciate your time and input.
Good day, sir.
B. B. Easton, Ed.S.
Oppressed School Psychologist
Conservative Public School System That Probably Still Supports the Confederacy
FROM: KENNETH EASTON
TO: B. B. EASTON
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1:18 P.M.
SUBJECT: RE: FRENCH IMMERSION
I think I am going to give you some input tonight.
Kenneth Easton
Blah, Blah Financial Money-Stuff Person
AGTBRF—Some Fucking Acronym I Never Bothered To Learn—Telecommunications
FROM: B. B. EASTON
TO: KENNETH EASTON
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1:20 P.M.
SUBJECT: RE: FRENCH IMMERSION
Tonight, Mr. Easton?
I never make appointments on such short notice, but for you, I suppose I could clear my schedule. Looking forward to it, sir.
B. B. Easton, Ed.S.
Oppressed School Psychologist
Conservative Public School System That Probably Still Supports the Confederacy
FROM: KENNETH EASTON
TO: B. B. EASTON
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1:25 P.M.
SUBJECT: RE: FRENCH IMMERSION
I hope you can squeeze me in.
Kenneth Easton
Blah, Blah Financial Money-Stuff Person
AGTBRF—Some Fucking Acronym I Never Bothered To Learn—Telecommunications
FROM: B. B. EASTON
TO: KENNETH EASTON
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1:36 P.M.
SUBJECT: RE: FRENCH IMMERSION
Mr. Easton! I’m going into a very serious meeting and have no more time for your tomfoolery.
Until tonight, sir!
B. B. Easton, Ed.S.
Oppressed School Psychologist
Conservative Public School System That Probably Still Supports the Confederacy
FROM: KENNETH EASTON
TO: B. B. EASTON
DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1:47 P.M.
SUBJECT: I’LL SHOW YOU IMMERSION
Tom who?
Kenneth Easton
Blah, Blah Financial Money-Stuff Person
AGTBRF—Some Fucking Acronym I Never Bothered To Learn—Telecommunications
867-5309
April 4
Dear Journal,
Did you know that I’ve had the same cell phone number since 1998? It’s true. And I’ve been screening my calls since 1999. Unless the number on the caller ID belongs to someone I would ask to bail me out of jail, I do not answer.
Ever since Skeletor went all stalkery on me after the Halloween breakup from hell, I eventually realized that the phone is just an evil Donnie Darko–style wormhole that has the power to connect you directly to someone far away who wants to scream at you and call you a whore.
Well, fuck you, Wormhole! Whose side are you on?
Of course, this was Ronald McKnight we were dealing with, and he was nothing if not thorough. So, naturally, his particular brand of stalking included attacks by air (cell towers) as well as by land. You see, when your stalker calls you fifty-seven times a day to no avail, eventually, he’s going to have to hunt you down so that he can scream at you in person. Only, by then, he’s going to be extra pissed off because his monster truck only gets four miles to the gallon, and you just cost him, like, a hundred bucks with your selfish call-screening ways.
Honestly, referring to what Knight put me through as stalking is a bit of an understatement. That shit was terrorism. The word stalk implies a certain degree of stealth, which one cannot attain when one’s vehicle is louder than a Boeing 737 driving over a fresh bed of M-80s inside an aluminum school gymnasium. I would have welcomed a good old-fashioned stalking compared to the psychological torture I’d endured.
Oh…you just happened to show up, unannounced, where I am. What a creepy coincidence.
Oh, look at that. There’s a random hair doll on my porch…and it’s just my color.
Hmm…somebody seems to have left a collage of pictures of me splattered with blood on my car…again.
Child’s play.
Instead, Knight used classical conditioning to paralyze me with fear two to five times per week. Like a Pavlovian dog, the instant my highly attuned ears picked up on the inimitable rumble of Knight’s piecemeal Frankentruck in the distance, my body would freeze. It didn’t matter what I’d been doing—ringing up a customer at Pier 1 Imports, smoking a cigarette in the parking lot, readjusting my thong—the moment my brain registered that ominous engine roar, my simple daily life activities would become suspended in time, as though I were a post-volcanic citizen of Pompeii. I could literally hear Knight’s wrath coming a mile away, which gave me plenty of time to dissociate and watch from some safe floaty place above my body as Knight lurched his homemade tank over the curb in front of wherever I happened to be at the time. Then, he’d descend upon the blinking vacant doe-eyed decoy left standing in my place.
The problem with having a cell phone you don’t answer is that, over time, you wind up giving the number to anyone and everyone who asks for it.
Because fuck it. Right? What’s the worst that can happen? They actually call? I’m not gonna