The attached was written in response to an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that contained a photograph (below) of what some people at the AT&T Network Operations Center in New Jersey claimed was me. (AT&T was my former employer of 30+ years.) The picture is of an unknown biker type in leathers and a half helmet.
Harrmph!
From: Foley, Rodney H (Rod), NCIO
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 9:05 AM
To: Various folks that worked in the New Jersey Network Operations Center
Subject: No Picture Of Me!
Tsk, Tsk,
Tsk,
So I go out to this Choke & Puke for lunch yesterday and I took the “picture in question” along for the ride.
As I sat upon my stool, enjoying the fragrance of a fine Redland Pinot Noir while picking rice out of my chin cactus, I continued making mental plans for the June 8th Portland Rose Society’s 112th Annual Spring Rose Show. Not having spoken with Mom since 1974, I was reluctant to finalize plans without her approval.
As I proffered the $3.75 to pay for my “All You Can Eat Red Beans & Rice With Sliver Of Sausage Special”, I also produced a crisp new twenty that I clutched in my other hand. Rozz, my waitress, eyed it suspiciously. “Don’t toy with me”, Rozz said through the cigar clenched between her two remaining teeth. She studied the fine engraving on Andrew Jackson’s face. I slid the twenty just out of reach and handed her the “picture in question”. Rozz grunted and exhaled her two obligatory belches that she is so proud of.
“What’s the rub?” she questioned. I explained that I had friends in a distant land, far from Appalachia, that wrongfully surmised that the terrifying specter in the newspaper photograph bore a small resemblance to her favorite LARGE tipper. Her jaw dropped and the butt of her cigar landed exactly in the geographical center of my Key Lime pie. She retrieved it and scooped some of the ashes out with a grubby finger nail.
“Where do I come in?”, she queries. "I need you" I replied as I slipped the twenty six inches closer, like a disinterested third party, to verify that I look nothing like the ape in the picture. She tightly focused her one good eye first on me, then on the twenty, then back on me. She then ask a totally unrelated question.
“How long you been straddlin' those murder cycles?” I proudly replied since the last day of school in 1956. Rozz licked the meringue off the unlighted end of the cigar and laughed out loud. I ask what was so funny? Rozz replaced the cigar between her teeth, taking great care to assure that each tooth went into the original notches and replied.
“Anyone who has EVER tried
to hold a conversation with you would intuitively know you don’t own a helmet
and have NEVER worn one!”
I guess that pretty much proves it isn’t me, doesn’t it?
(Editor: YOU decide! (see below)
