Ode to Justin

I'm feeling a little guilty.

First of all, my best friend just got engaged and I missed it. I missed the call telling me it was going to happen soon, I missed the text message that it happened, and I ended up finding out about it on Facebook. When I finally got it all sorted out, I was confronted with the notion that I am either a bad friend, or I am a really bad phone user. I don't keep my cell phone charged, or on my person. We have voicemail on our landline and even though it beeps when you pick the phone up to call someone, I am spectacularly good at ignoring those beeps and neglecting to EVER check voicemail. Because of these little factoid gems, I am forced to concede that at the very least, I am a bad phone user.

My friends have figured this out, and I am rarely called anymore. Regretfully, they've also not become accustomed to emailing me either, so often, they are befuddled as to how to contact me and end up scrapping plans altogether.

My bad.

When I checked my cell phone voicemail and my landline voicemail, I found 17 new messages, 3 of which were from my mother, one from my friend, and the other 13 from political candidates.

This is particularly annoying because on my landline voicemail you MUST listen to the ENTIRE voicemail before pressing the button to delete. Repeatedly pushing the button to delete while listening to the message only angers the voicemail gods and will eventually result in bad voicemail karma... like... Oh, I don't know... Missing when your best friend gets engaged?

Secondly, this is all to emphasize that I am somewhat annoyed by the unwanted courtship going on. I have made a decision about who I'm going to vote for. It wasn't a difficult decision for me. This SHOULD make me unattractive to spend time and manhours on. Also, no matter how many times Barack or Michelle personally call me, they are still only getting one vote from me. It's not like I've been hoarding votes over the years and one more smooth-voiced message from Barack Obama is going to sweet-talk me into pouring them all into his honeypot. Yet, even aside from the calls still courting my vote, the Obama campaign has other ideas for my free time that they're eager to share.

Let me preface with this: In March/April of 08, my husband and I hosted a friend of mine from Highschool for 6 weeks in our house. His name is Scott. He is a good guy, and one of my more interesting and unique friends. He attended Princeton, spent some time in Japan, worked as an inner-city teacher, and is now a hard-core campaigner for the Obama Campaign. Suffice to say, Scott does not stay in one place for very long. He is very smart, and very driven, and he burns out often because he applies 200% of himself to whatever he's involved with. He was stationed in Pittsburgh, and we took pity on him and let him stay in our "spare room" - the one that is now my craft room.

Prior to his stay, Greg wasn't sure what to make of my fanciful reminiscences of Scott. Stories about Scott leaping over people's heads for a laugh, or walking up to moody gothy teens - saying "Suicide is not the way out" - and jumping over the side of the Wildwood boardwalk, made Greg simultaneously jealous and amused. Any jealousy was quickly dispelled upon the arrival of our curious house ghost. Amused tolerance pervaded his 6 week stay. He was quiet, clean, and exhausted all the time. Scott is vegan (as close a label as you're going to get) so there was no chance of him eating our food, and he was almost NEVER in the house anyway. Occasionally he would wander into the house at around 10 p.m., eat something fast and definitively NOT nutritious, and then head back out into the night. You could NOT have a conversation with him without his cell phone ringing at least twice (to the tune of the Mario theme song). This was not aided by the fact that he had two cell phones. While he was with us, the Obama campaign decided to pay him a pittance and elated, I think he celebrated with a 15 minutes of sleep that day. He was a very good house guest, and the only time I was annoyed with him was when he gave us an un-brain filtered lecture on what he thinks about churches.

Scott stayed with us till after the Pennsylvania Primaries and then he headed off into the sunset. He left shampoo, his shaver, a raggedy ann doll and 4 random, angry, close-up pictures taken in our bathroom with our digital camera that we found weeks later when uploading the photos to the computer and totally freaked me out. We think he's in Colorado right now. I'm not certain. He will possibly move to Ecuador after the election because he thinks he might fit better in their culture although he neglected to explain why.

Regardless, I felt as though I'd done my duty to contribute to the campaign. I saved them hundreds on lodging fees for one of their coordinators and I was going to vote for their guy. That's it right? I should get a pat on the back.

But no. I think Scott put me on some infernal list and now, every day or so, I get a call from the Pittsburgh Obama Campaign office, saying that "it says here that you might be inclined to volunteer! so if you could just give me a call at 555-stal-ker9, I would appreciate it!". In addition to my sensitivity about which phone calls I receive and which I don't... and who bothers to call in the first place... It's safe to say that "Justin" called at the wrong time.

Justin is probably just a random volunteer with the Obama campaign. Justin bit off a tetch more than he could chew when he dialed my number on Wednesday. I took the day off to rest at home, Greg took the day off to rest. We were watching the West Wing, dreaming about a Bartlett presidency and cuddling when the phone rang. I leapt to answer it incase it was work, because they're the only ones who knew I stayed home for some personal time.


Me: "HELLO MAY I PLEASE HELP YOU?"(shut up. yes. I always answer the phone like this)

Justin: Hello. My name is Justin and I work with the Obama campaign and I was just calling to ask about whether or not you'd be interested in volunteering some time with us, because it says here that you're....

Me: [interrupting] Justin is it?

Justin: [hesitating, surprised at being taken off script] Yes?

Me: [sweetly] Justin, Can I tell you something?

Justin: [A little too eager...] You can tell me anything.

Me: [harder voiced to discourage any hope] I don't know what list you have me on, but I didn't tell anyone to put my name down for any campaign volutneer lists in the first place. This is the billionth campaign call I've gotten this week asking if I want to Volunteer. I want you to know that I hosted an Obama campaign coordinator in my house for 6 weeks. I don't have "extra" money to donate. I don't have "extra" time with which to volunteer. I will vote for Obama, and that's it. Okay?

Justin: .... uh... okay?.... uhm....

Me: Okay. Good bye [in the most sickly sweet, sing-song voice you can imagine.]
*click*


Okay. So I admit, it's not quite incendiary. And I do believe I was fairly polite. After hanging up the phone, I giggled for a few minutes at the cleverness of me.

Then I started to feel guilty. Poor guy. I mean, here he is, calling me up cause he thinks I'll be all friendly and "oh yes! please let me volunteer! I'll cry if you don't sign me up" and instead, I'm all "Shove it up your butt".

So Justin, if you're out there, I'm sorry for being bitchy.

But if you call me again, I'm going to reach through the phone and punch you in the face.