July 2, 2006

• One Thousand Extra Minutes

  Three years ago, when Greyfox moved his business fifty miles into
  Wasilla and started staying in a cabin there, he developed a
  routine.  He’d walk across the Parks Highway (Alaska’s busiest
  road, and the stretch of it with the highest accident rate) every 
  morning to get a newspaper from the convenience store and call me from
  the pay phone outside there.

  Much of his conversation, as much as half of it, was about the ambient
  noise, the diesel fumes from the trucks there at the gas pumps, the
  wind, or rain, or whatever weather was currently targeting him for
  misery.  I’m not kidding about the weather.  His narcissistic
  personality disorder was in full expression back then, and NPD tends to
  magnify small affronts or ailments and to take everything personally.

  After
  much discussion, research and comparison shopping, he bought a cell
  phone.  Even after he had made the decision, the transaction was
  delayed because the AT&T kiosk at Wal-Mart was sold out of the
  bargain phone he had decided to get.  Eventually, he settled for a
  more expensive model with a bewildering number of “bells and whistles”
  that he swore he’d have no use for.

  His cell plan gave him unlimited off-peak minutes, so every night at
  nine he’d call me for long conversations, and we’d call each other ad
  lib all weekend.  For a while, it was very enjoyable, a distinct
  step up from his having to run across the highway to the pay phone and
  my not being able to call him at all.  He even learned how to play
  solitaire on his phone.  Then AT&T sold out to Cellular One.

  Immediately, the quality of transmission plummeted.  It became
  more invective than conversation during our calls.  He’d curse and
  scream every time I’d ask him to repeat something or tell him he was
  breaking up.  Consequently, I hesitated to tell him if I didn’t
  quite hear everything he said, and I’d do my best to fill in the blanks
  rather than listen to him screaming.  That NPD magnification of
  affronts thing — remember? — I was half expecting him to work himself
  up into a heart attack or pop an artery in his brain.

  Then, last winter, his original phone quit working.  Along with
  his new phone, he went for an upgraded service and the quality was
  suddenly back to what it had been when it was with AT&T.  The
  downside was that there was no longer any free off-peak time.  He
  got 850 anytime minutes a month, and our relationship became very
  attenuated.  He’d call me up, tell me about his triumphs and
  troubles, and just about the time he’d start to run down he’d notice
  how long he’d been talking and say it was time to “ring off.”  If
  that’s an obscure phrase to you, you may be too young to recall when
  phones had a little crank on the side which you’d turn several times to
  ring up the operator so she could connect your line to the line you
  wanted to call, and then give a quick turn when you hung up, to let her
  know she could disconnect you.

  NPD being what it is, he didn’t realize that there was any problem with
  that until I confronted him one night last winter as we were waiting
  for the optometrist to see me.  Out of boredom, he had been
  playing with his new phone, trying out new ringtones, and that gave me
  the opening I needed.  I described the patterns our nightly
  conversations had settled into and gave him an ultimatum:  spend a
  little extra to get some more minutes so I could get a few words in
  before he rang off, or divorce me.

  The receptionist at the optical shop got a chuckle out of that. 
  It seemed reasonable to me, and after I gave her some background, she
  agreed.  Her husband works in the oil fields on the North Slope,
  so her marriage is largely conducted by phone, too. 

  Greyfox spent five dollars and had 500 off-peak minutes added to his
  plan.  We spent our time like most people on fixed incomes spend
  their money, so that at the end of the month we were down to one- and
  two-minute check-in phone calls each night.  Thirteen hundred and
  fifty minutes (minus whatever time he spends on business and calls to
  or from his sisters), just wasn’t enough time in which to maintain a
  relationship.

  Now, since he sprang for another 500 minutes a month, we’re doing
  okay.  We still tend to splurge on time at the beginning of each
  month, and keep an eye on the clock later on, but we both have time to
  have our say and the marriage is intact.  So now we know how much
  time our relationship takes:  1,850 minutes a month.

  

  • 3:55 pm
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