Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Reflections on a Christmas Past By J. G. Fabiano I know the title of this essay sounds a bit like a Dickens novel but the Christmas past I am talking about happens a day after the holiday. The pounds have been put on our bodies like drifting snow in a nor'easter and the aches and pains of drinking more in three days than one drinks in an entire year make eyes look like they are surrounded by bright red Christmas pillows. In my father's day the time after the big day was spent building toys. This would mean taking out his tool box and reading a single page of instructions hoping he would understand the English of the person who originally wrote it. When I say a single page I mean one giant single page you put across the living room rug and carefully follow the 'numbered' instructions using the 'lettered' parts. Today I find myself studying a 350 page book hoping to understand the techno-jargon of some geek who originally wrote the manuscript in order to drive the non-geeks of the world nuts. I also have to read through the whole book until I find the English instructions. As to why they put the Spanish language first is above and beyond my comprehension. Maybe there are more Spanish geeks than English ones. I bought my wife a new phone and a blue-tooth for Christmas. In my past I thought a phone would work as soon as you charged it for a couple of hours. This no longer holds true. One has to set up the applications and control setting of the phone before it is allowed to ring. Did I say ring? That was another chore I had bought myself because I had to suffer through the rendition of every song created so it could tell my wife she had a phone call. My pc has nothing on the control panel of my new phone. It does everything from taking pictures and movies to attaching you to the Internet so you can check what is happening in Czechoslovakia and what the weather is like in the Philippines. You can also check your E-mail in order to find out if someone from these countries is checking up on you. The basic problem is the screen is too small to see anything. The keyboard on the phone that used to only display numbers now has a multitude of activities as long as you know what mode to place them in. These same buttons are also too small to be controlled by anyone larger than an elf. I also had to set up a weather station that was supposed to work as soon as I put in the batteries. Of course, the instructions said I would have to wait at least an hour for the satellite to find the station. If I took a shuttle ride it would take less time to find the satellite. Needless to say two hours passed and the thing that was supposed to display a five-day forecast did absolutely nothing. Feeling as though I had the intelligence of a slug I decided to call the manufacturer in order to find out why what was supposed to work didn't. In fact, I am writing this article with my land-line phone wedged onto my shoulder listening to some music from 'The 1812 Overture' making me more aggressive by the second. You would think they would play the theme from 'The Love Story' in order to calm a person down. I just heard for the fifteenth time all the operators were busy and my call will be answered in the order it was received. In other words, I dare not hang up because that would place me at the end of a line I have no clue as to how long it is. I am also inundated with advertisements by pleasant sounding women asking me to buy more of their product. I want to scream into the phone the only reason I am hanging on is one of your products doesn't work and why in hell would I dare buy another. I am also advised I could visit their web site in order to see more of their products. I never hear anything about a complaint department because that would make me hang up and lose my place in line. After killing most of my morning I actually talked to a real person who sounded nothing like the person who was on the many recordings. She probably retired from making the earlier recordings because her voice became old and hard. From here she will probably end up at some state tax office. She asked for my zip code. I wondered why hoping she wasn't going to send me something I had to wait for. She then told me the weather station I purchased could not receive the signal. I was going to ask why I wasn't told that when I bought the thing. The next day I returned the weather station. At first the clerk told me I couldn't return it because I opened it. I must have had quite the expression on my face because within seconds my return was complete. I know the title of this essay sounds a bit like a Dickens novel but after the day I just suffered through the ghost of Christmas past wouldn't be such a bad sight to see. The End.
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