Turning the page

Bienvenidos mis amiguitos, and it's good to see you here once again at UOPTA. No, that doesn't stand for "Uniting Old People Through Aromatherapy," but I'm curious as to which scents would be the most effective. Chicken noodle soup? Freshly-cut Social Security checks? I need more time to think about this. (Thanks to my homey Rockabye for supplying that UOPTA. You can send your own into ptklein@gmail.com, if you should be so bold.) Instead, this UOPTA is an aromatherapy-free zone in which I write down some thoughts and stories. If you're up for (and down with) that, please proceed to the next paragraph.

Ah, glad you made it over the treacherous white space. (I don't think I use the word "treacherous" nearly enough; it's a good one.) So I have a little topic to discuss today. Last week, the same homey Rockabye IMd me asking for our friend Greg's number because it wasn't going through. I wrote him back saying that he had a new number, and then I supplied it. He said that he had that number listed in his phone as Greg's pager number. I told him that he must have entered it into the wrong field, because neither Greg nor anyone else I know currently has a pager. He then suggested that I write something about pagers and old technology. Ta-frickin-dah!

By a show of hands, how many of you have owned a pager? Great, and of those, how many still own and operate one? If your hand is still up, I assume you're a doctor who's on call. In the past decade, I have only handled a pager when given to me at a busy restaurant to notify me when my table is ready. Before that though, there was a time in which pagers played an important role in my life (although I never owned one). That time was high school.

It was the early 90s, and my dad's giant (and wired) car phone was still relevant in the world of technology. Some super cool people had the "cellular telephones" the size of one of Shaq's shoes, but they were still far from common. So the most prevalent way of locating someone was via pager, and it had a whole culture around it. In fact, my friend Dusty and I listened a lot to a tape (yes, as in cassette) by A Tribe Called Quest that not only had a song about a pager ("Skypager") complete with dialing sounds and an automated woman's voice, but the first song on the tape ("Excursions") started with these words:

"Back in the days when I was a teenager/before I had status and before I had a pager."

So it was pretty cool. In fact, the pager in the early 90s is the only item I can think of that symbolized both the medical and the hip hop communities. I find that to be impressive. (Oh sure, many professions besides those two employed the use of pagers too, but will you agree with me that those were the ones most associated with them? What if I say please? What if I comment on Dr. Dre perfectly straddling both genres?) In any case, Dusty got a pager. It's a bit laughable now when I think about the extra step of calling someone's device to say, "Call me," instead of just reaching him right then, but that was what we were working with. Additionally, we were limited to paging someone with a combination of the numbers 0-9, so communicating a message was very difficult.

The general message was assumed to be, "Call me," but there were times that more needed to be said. The first step was having an identifying number sequence. I was at an age in which I thought fake Satan worshiping was funny/cool/dark/ridiculous, so I would page Dusty with "666" to ask him to call me at home. If I was elsewhere, I'd put the home number of where I wanted him to call and then 666. Because of the obvious limitations, some people created codes for saying things like, "I love you." I don't remember trying to write things in upside-down numbers, but I'm sure that happened. I just don't know how helpful, "LOOSE," "BOOBLESS," or similar words would've been at the time. (As a side note, I was wide awake in the middle of the night earlier this week and realized that I could write a whole sentence with upside-down numbers: "He loses his shoes." Without spaces, but not bad, right?)

There was only one other code that I knew, and I used it on just one occasion: 911. Yes, the dreaded, "THIS IS IMPORTANT" page. One Saturday, a friend from high school had scheduled a get-together for her birthday. It was lunch at a place wayyyyy out in Santa Monica. (As an adult, I now know that I really didn't go all that far, but it was out of my very small knowledge base of streets.) I had to be at work back in The Valley at 1pm, and this thing was called for 11. No problem, right? I ate, hung out, and left myself 45 minutes to get somewhere that shouldn't take nearly that amount of time on a Saturday. "How do I get to the freeway?" I asked. A friend told me directions that were unfortunately too vague for me. They involved that hated phrase, "You can't miss it." Oh really? Trust me, I can miss it just fine.

I made the first turn, then chose one of the next few streets to make the second (I was told I had options), and then had no idea where I was and saw no freeway in any direction. Crap. I kept driving, looking for a green sign to point me to a freeway, and said many an expletive out loud. After a few minutes, I figured I must be going the wrong way and turned around. Ten minutes later, and I was sweating and watching the minutes tick by to my expected arrival at work. I pulled over and went into a gas station to ask for directions. To my horror, the guy gave me a four-step process without all of the street names.

15 minutes later, I was more lost and frantic than ever. I was supposed to be at work any minute, and as far as I knew, I would be stuck on that side of town for the rest of my life. I pulled over and found a pay phone (remember those?). I dialed Dusty's pager number, put the number of the pay phone, 666, and then 911. I thought that if he called me, I could tell him the street signs near me, have him use his Thomas Guide or something, and get me the hell out of there. Then I paced for about ten minutes. I called again and did the same thing. After waiting a little while longer, I gave up and went into the next gas station I saw. "Oh, you're real close," the guy said. "Just continue on this street and the onramp's on the right." He was right, and once on the freeway, my "I'm lost" anxiety was completely replaced by "I'm late" anxiety.

I devised a plan: I was a good kid who was never ever late and obeyed all rules. If I played it right, I should be able to say that I was supposed to be there at 2 instead of 1 and no one would question me. It might work, right? I walked into work at 1:58pm (which is a little later than I'd normally get there for a 2pm start time), playing it as cool as possible. I strolled nonchalantly into the back and ran into my boss. "Hey," he said. "Hey," I said back. "Were you supposed to be here at 1?" "No, 2 to closing today," I said matter-of-factly. "Oh, I thought we had you down for 1. Huh." Then he walked away. The drama was over, but my heart remained pounding for the next hour or so.

I found out the next day that Dusty had gotten my 911 pages, but he was in the middle of taking a practice SAT and couldn't leave without voiding his entire test. I told him I took care of everything, and neglected to mention that it was the most stressful two-hour period of my entire life.

I have another, shorter pager-related story. My senior year of high school, I briefly dated a girl who was in a school play with me. She was very private and never really talked about herself, her family, or her friends. I asked for her phone number, and she gave me her pager number instead. "What if I want to call you?" I asked. "Just page me. I'll call you back," she said. I thought that was a little strange, but didn't think too much about it. She let me come over to her mom's place one afternoon, and we were talking about the play when her pager buzzed. "Hold on," she said, and she went over and started dialing a phone. Here is her side of the conversation, as I recall it:

"Hey it's me. Yeah. How much do you want? Yeah, I can get that. Same price as last time. Cool, I'll meet up with you tomorrow. Bye."

I had to say something, so I went with, "Uh, gee, what was that about?" "Nothing. Just a friend," she said. So in addition to being extremely private and likely a drug dealer, she apparently also thought I was stupid. A week or so later, I told her I just wanted to be friends, with one of the biggest "It's-not-you-it's-me" lies in the history of mankind. It was her. It was toooootally her.

With that, let's lie our asses off as we move over to the Car Watch.

I was driving around last weekend, and I noticed that the license plate frame in front of me said, "Tight Butts/Drive Me Nuts." I saw that it was a man driving. "Wow, he really wants that to be known," I thought. Then I looked at the actual plate on the car: "XY 2 XY." Ah, maybe he likes tight butts...on men. I'm not the only one reading it that way, am I? Either way, the dude has a preference and no problem telling us in rhyming fashion. I'm cool with that. (On second thought, maybe this guy just wanted to one-up R&B stars Boyz 2 Men. Yeah, that's probably it. My bad.)

My homey Rockabye sent me this plate that he spied: "DRANGRY." Sadly, I can only think of one reason why a doctor would want to be known as "Dr. Angry," and that's if it's his/her unfortunate surname. Otherwise, who wants an angry doctor? ("Dr. Angry, paging Dr. Angry.") I just spent the last five minutes trying to think of what kind of doctor I'd least want to be angry while seeing me. Oh sure, a dentist wouldn't be fun, but I'm gonna have to go with proctologist on this one. Or laser eye surgeon. I think I could deal with an angry podiatrist though. (I just stopped myself from making a forced pun about "putting my foot down." You're welcome.)

Lastly, I saw a bumper sticker that I really enjoyed: "There's something funny about my kid." In smaller letters beneath that, it said, "Comedy Sportz High School League." That's the improv league I was a part of for my junior and senior year of high school, so it pleased me quite a bit. I used to have a Comedy Sportz bumper sticker of my own on my Bronco II back in high school. It said, "My parents went to Comedy Sportz and all I got was this lousy car." I thought it was hilarious, but a weird neighbor of mine didn't get it and once asked me why I didn't like my car. I tried to explain, but realized that was only making matters worse.

Ok, I'm spent. Get out of here, and enjoy your weekends and weeks. I'll be back next Friday with the stuff that I actually planned to write about for this post. In the meantime: Happy birthday today to my father-in-law, and happy 6th anniversary on Monday to my favorite brother and his wife Weezie. That's all I got. See you next time, friends.