Spent your rebate check yet?
Sorry to say, I already have, and also my wife’s, way back in February, long before they ever arrived.
And, even sorrier to admit, I may as well have thrown them out the window. That’s how stupid I was, incredibly so. Read on and you‘ll agree.
You see, our decade-old fridge started humming and buzzing last winter. “It’s in the guts, which would be expensive to repair or replace,” I was told. So out with the old one and in with a new one, costing about $1,100.
Guess what? The noise got even worse. Out came a Whirlpool repair man. It too had an internal problem, he concluded, so Lowe’s replaced it free, with another identical one that sounded just the same. So, out came still another Whirlpool guy.
He examined it front and back, inside and out. Finally his verdict: It wasn’t the fridge. The noise was from something else. That shook me. But what about the earlier diagnoses? No matter. It wasn’t the fridge. He left me totally flummoxed.
But wait a sec. A tiny old-fashioned light bulb lit up in the recesses of my noggin. I had been running the heat-pump fan continuously for a long time. What would happen if I just flipped its switch off? The noise immediately stopped. The new fridge was purring quietly. Then the Sherlock Holmes in me decided to check the heat pump’s filters. Uh, oh, they were a mess. Replacing them, I turned the fan back on. Voila! No hum, no buzz. No elation.
Everything all better except me and my checkbook. How could I have been so dumb, me being a college graduate and all, and later a government boss with a big office?
Sadly, as I now confess amid my ignorance-induced misery, that refrigerator fiasco wasn’t the only really stupid and expensive thing I had done. I’m not talking about marriage and kids here. Just me. Imperfect, gullible sinner who had lucked out most of his life.
Still, an earlier sucker episode, one that memory had tried for years to erase, came reluctantly to mind.
It was back in my happy times as that bureaucrat downtown in D.C. Strolling around Lafayette Square on a fine springtime afternoon, I chanced upon a fellow who was obviously a bit down on his luck, and furthermore an Aquia Harbour neighbor, he reminded me. Yes, I recalled having seen him on the block. He was getting his car fixed, see, and was only $100 short of having enough cash to pay for it, as he showed me his wallet with some other bills inside.
Chatting amiably, we then strolled over to a nearby cash machine and out belched the bills and I felt wonderfully helpful. He was grateful as could be, saying to stop by his home tonight and he’d pay me back. So I did. And guess what? Where I thought he lived, he didn’t, and nobody had ever heard of him. That little light bulb flickered on.
Mr. Gullible, that’s me. I hastened to think of how I might at least have cut my next income tax return with a deduction for dumbness. The story, however, didn’t end there.
I must look like I’m just waiting to be bamboozled. For wouldn’t you know, in a similar circumstance two or three years later, this same guy again came on to me, this time in a sandwich shop nearby . He’d forgotten me, but I hadn’t him. I stood up to see if any cops were around, but he had already scooted away.
Egos are meant for deflating, I guess. Mine has suffered a few:
--As a young parent at a PTA meeting, I was grilling the new grade-school principal: Do you think we should abandon capital punishment of students in the classroom? CORPORAL, dummy. Laughter all around.
--At my barbershop quartet’s first public performance onstage at a benefit in Culpeper, my voice quivered and quaked while my buddies finished the song to scattered applause. Stage fright? Impossible. I had sung lots of other venues, no sweat. Regardless. Stage fright..
--And oh yes, as a young lieutenant striving hard to be cool in preparing to escort a retiring General Hap Arnold ceremoniously around our little antiaircraft base in Chicago, I totally clutched up and forgot the spiel I had rehearsed. He waited, then smiled and said why didn’t I just show him the gun park. I tried to smile back, mortified by my blown assignment.
Suppressing such deflating moments, I prefer to recall the triumphs, the slam dunks. There were many, let me tell you. Er, memory is fleeting but in a moment I’ll think of some, besides my great good fortune in marrying my beautiful, my first and only wife who remains madly in love with me.
But please don’t mention refrigerators.
And, even sorrier to admit, I may as well have thrown them out the window. That’s how stupid I was, incredibly so. Read on and you‘ll agree.
You see, our decade-old fridge started humming and buzzing last winter. “It’s in the guts, which would be expensive to repair or replace,” I was told. So out with the old one and in with a new one, costing about $1,100.
Guess what? The noise got even worse. Out came a Whirlpool repair man. It too had an internal problem, he concluded, so Lowe’s replaced it free, with another identical one that sounded just the same. So, out came still another Whirlpool guy.
He examined it front and back, inside and out. Finally his verdict: It wasn’t the fridge. The noise was from something else. That shook me. But what about the earlier diagnoses? No matter. It wasn’t the fridge. He left me totally flummoxed.
But wait a sec. A tiny old-fashioned light bulb lit up in the recesses of my noggin. I had been running the heat-pump fan continuously for a long time. What would happen if I just flipped its switch off? The noise immediately stopped. The new fridge was purring quietly. Then the Sherlock Holmes in me decided to check the heat pump’s filters. Uh, oh, they were a mess. Replacing them, I turned the fan back on. Voila! No hum, no buzz. No elation.
Everything all better except me and my checkbook. How could I have been so dumb, me being a college graduate and all, and later a government boss with a big office?
Sadly, as I now confess amid my ignorance-induced misery, that refrigerator fiasco wasn’t the only really stupid and expensive thing I had done. I’m not talking about marriage and kids here. Just me. Imperfect, gullible sinner who had lucked out most of his life.
Still, an earlier sucker episode, one that memory had tried for years to erase, came reluctantly to mind.
It was back in my happy times as that bureaucrat downtown in D.C. Strolling around Lafayette Square on a fine springtime afternoon, I chanced upon a fellow who was obviously a bit down on his luck, and furthermore an Aquia Harbour neighbor, he reminded me. Yes, I recalled having seen him on the block. He was getting his car fixed, see, and was only $100 short of having enough cash to pay for it, as he showed me his wallet with some other bills inside.
Chatting amiably, we then strolled over to a nearby cash machine and out belched the bills and I felt wonderfully helpful. He was grateful as could be, saying to stop by his home tonight and he’d pay me back. So I did. And guess what? Where I thought he lived, he didn’t, and nobody had ever heard of him. That little light bulb flickered on.
Mr. Gullible, that’s me. I hastened to think of how I might at least have cut my next income tax return with a deduction for dumbness. The story, however, didn’t end there.
I must look like I’m just waiting to be bamboozled. For wouldn’t you know, in a similar circumstance two or three years later, this same guy again came on to me, this time in a sandwich shop nearby . He’d forgotten me, but I hadn’t him. I stood up to see if any cops were around, but he had already scooted away.
Egos are meant for deflating, I guess. Mine has suffered a few:
--As a young parent at a PTA meeting, I was grilling the new grade-school principal: Do you think we should abandon capital punishment of students in the classroom? CORPORAL, dummy. Laughter all around.
--At my barbershop quartet’s first public performance onstage at a benefit in Culpeper, my voice quivered and quaked while my buddies finished the song to scattered applause. Stage fright? Impossible. I had sung lots of other venues, no sweat. Regardless. Stage fright..
--And oh yes, as a young lieutenant striving hard to be cool in preparing to escort a retiring General Hap Arnold ceremoniously around our little antiaircraft base in Chicago, I totally clutched up and forgot the spiel I had rehearsed. He waited, then smiled and said why didn’t I just show him the gun park. I tried to smile back, mortified by my blown assignment.
Suppressing such deflating moments, I prefer to recall the triumphs, the slam dunks. There were many, let me tell you. Er, memory is fleeting but in a moment I’ll think of some, besides my great good fortune in marrying my beautiful, my first and only wife who remains madly in love with me.
But please don’t mention refrigerators.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:40 PM
