I’ve chronicled my exploits with the water company a bit earlier, but to sum up: we didn’t get a bill for the first four months we were in this here new house, and then they shut us off, and I had to pay $29, presumably the debt owed, to get it back on.
So, I had pretty much assumed that $29 for four months would be about the right amount. I’ve never had to pay for water, I have no concept of what it costs if it doesn’t come bottled from the grocery and labeled NAIVE backwards.
Recently, we received the bimonthly bill… for $222! Shocked, I put it on my little bill keeper thingy, and went into denial for a couple weeks.
Then tonight, I started going through the monthly bills, and paid the $222 through online billpay.
But when I got to the bottom of my bill stack, there was a late notice from the water company. (I was, in fact, 4 days late as of today). But the odd bit is, the bill was for $146!
So confused. So very, very confused.
I’m gonna go get me a divining stick and start diggin’ a well.
Oooh, you gonna git it now! How much bathing could you possibly be doing over there?
You’re going to have to go down there in person. This will be aggravating, but it will also be terribly amusing, because you will get to spend several quality hours with the globules of civil servitude, being moved up and down the line until eventually you get one who finds your quirky appeal. Or at least that’s how I worked it out with Dekalb County.
The Lucas clan are a very clean sort. At least, I am. At least, I take very, very long showers.
I’m known to cause droughts. Grapes of Wrath? My fault.
I shudder to go down in person. THIS is what happened last time.
Huh.
Well, you are going to have to give up any sense of personal dignity that remains. You might have to cry. I am not ashamed in the least to admit that I have resorted to such when dealing with monopolies.
If it were a retail establishment, I would advise you to get on the phone with them and offer to come down there and help you figure this out.
But see what a good story you got that other time?
But see what a good story you got that other time?
There’s a good, solid truth in that. In my heart of hearts, I think I crave bureacracy, inefficiency, idiocy, mishaps, disasters, and explosions just so I’ll have a yarn to spin around the campfire.
Of course, it would make just as good a story if I went down there and they gave me a footstool to rest my weary feet on whilest I chewed on some homemade chocolate mousse ice-cream cake.
Where’s that water company?
That water company is off Laredo Drive, near your Dekalb Farmer’s Market.
But that story wouldn’t be nearly as good, because in that story, there’s no chance at all that anyone would take a wad of gum out of her mouth and stick it to the bulletproof glass that separates the gummint from The Least of These Our Brethren.
But that story wouldn’t be nearly as good, because in that story, there’s no chance at all that anyone would take a wad of gum out of her mouth and stick it to the bulletproof glass that separates the gummint from The Least of These Our Brethren.
a) Is that a true story?
2) If true, was that you or her with the gum? I need to know whether to be impressed or mortified, respectively.
What happened was my friend Rodney got arrested about ten years ago for having the other half of his Zanax wrapped up in a gum wrapper in his jacket pocket and our loopy friend Carleen thought that I would be the best person to go down to the Garnett Street Hilton and hannel the situation. I didn’t much think it was a good at 5:30 in the morning for me to go down there, being as how I’m not (contrary to popular rumor) that familiar with bailing people out, but I went anyway, because, hell, it was Sunday morning and I was up already anyway.
As I was standing there in line to speak with the Woman at The Window, there was an acid washed lovely at the window just down from mine, speaking with her man on the other side of the window. He was apparently declaring his undying devotion to her, because she took a wad of grape bubblegum as big as a golfball out of her mouth and stuck it to the chickenwire window and said, “Yew owny lumme win yew in jayul.” And then she walked off and left him while we all stood there and watched it slide down the window.
So the short answer is neither. The best I’ve got is telling the judge I’d be happy to share my reason for driving so expeditiously through Ansley Park, but I’d need to tell the lady clerk. I’m more a retail malcontent.
But see, in gummint places, people have gum and they’re not afraid to use it.
Wow.
I guess it’s really important to just go ahead and take the whole Zanax.
I guess. I would have arrested him for the sheer stupidity of swallowing a barely extinguished joint, but I’m no expert, you understand.