the simplest plans laid to waste

I spent most of this afternoon on the phone. With a textbook company. Trying to get them to send me a free instructor's edition of the book I'm going to need for my next college class. And, quite frankly, I don't think I'll be getting this book anytime soon. All my effort wasted...and to think of the wasted time which could have been put to good use. Now I'll never know how Maury helped save those unruly teens by putting them in boot camp, or how Judge Joe Brown solved the particularly tricky case of the ex-girlfriend who threw eggs at her ex-boyfriends pick-up truck and is now being sued for $5000 to cover his new paint and emotional distress.

I've long since come to the realization that, in order to learn anything in my quest for another degree, I'm going to be teaching myself. To aid in this, I feel that...if given the answers...I can work backwards and gain a more concrete picture of the material. And, in the event that there's simply no way I'm going to get the picture, concrete or mushy, at least I'll have all the answers.

So my goal was simple. Call the textbook company and get a sample textbook. My cover story was iron clad too. I was either going to be an A) community college professor that wanted to review a possible new textbook for inclusion in a college course, or B) a new, adjunct, faculty member who couldn't find the required teacher edition because the previous professor misplaced it. Very simple.

So I called, and explained story B to Kelly. Kelly asked the name of the college, which I had prepared for, and after my response I was quite disheartened to see that my book was not going to be placed in the mail just yet. As it turns out, Kelly asked for the name of my 'department chair' and a number that she could reach my 'department chair' at.

Thinking quickly, I told her the first name that popped into my head...which was the name of my friend Jill. So I gave her Jill's name and number. The same number which Kelly proceeded to call on a separate line. Unfortunately, it wasn't until Kelly called that I remembered that Jill isn't one of those people who can just have a message which says, "This is Jill, sorry I missed your call, please leave a message."

No, the friend I choose to be my 'department chair' is one of those annoying people who enjoys leaving a two minute karaoke moment on their answering machine. So when Kelly called, she got 120 seconds of Jill singing "Hey Jude" at the top of her lungs, accompanied by music blaring in the background.

Any credibility of Jill being a department chair for any college anywhere in the country was quickly extinguished. To top it off, her singing is incredibly bad. So not only did Kelly get back on the phone being very doubtful of my professorship, she was also quite cranky.

"Sir," Kelly said, "the number you provided did not appear to connect to an accredited university. Now, I checked the college's web page which you claim to teach at, and I didn't see you listed on the faculty page. Further, I called and spoke with a human resources person there, and she had never heard of you."

Granted, I was impressed with Kelly's thoroughness, but, thinking quickly again, I switched to plan A, "Oh, did you say that you called the Community College? Obviously you misunderstood me, because what I meant to say is that I'm a professor who's thinking of switching textbooks in a course that I'm teaching at a very prominent university."

Interestingly enough, it was at this point in the conversation that our connection was mysteriously lost.

A simple teacher's edition for a class that I'll be taking is all I wanted. I had every intention of actually 'reading' the book...and if all of the exams and answers were provided, I figured that this would simply have facilitated my learning and added to my understanding of the material.

But no, this simple little plan blew up because of Kelly's incessant meddling. And I think it's a sad world that we live in when we've all become so distrustful of each other.

Especially when this distrust means that I'm going to be required to work.