IT IS LIKE A MIRACLE!

I had surgery a week ago and have been taking it easy at home, recovering.  I am astounded by the healing abilities of the body.  Immediately after the operation and in the three days following, I was convinced that I would not survive.  But then I turned the corner and the pain began to lessen.  And all of this happened while I sat and watched.  I did nothing to facilitate the process.  We are simply and miraculously programmed to rebuild.  Until we are not.

During the fourth of fifth night of curling myself protectively over my own abdomen in my chair in front of the TV, I answered the phone and was informed that I was a semi-finalist in a $50,000 home makeover contest.  Normally, I would have simply said I was not interested and hung up the phone.  But perhaps due to boredom, or due to the drugs languishing in my blood, I began to question the voice on the other end of the line. 

We had already established that I was indeed Cheryl (pronounced chair-rail) Hicks, but I had to explain two times to the voice that I had not entered a contest before he found the place in his script where he assured me that sometimes one’s name simply becomes available for such contests on the internet.  “It is like a miracle.”

Perhaps that is what made me continue to question the voice.

“Where did you get my name and phone number?  Who do you work for?”

“Yes, well, the identity of the principal of the organization at the immediate top of the corporation is… “  (and here I lost track of my ability to listen.  I am still unsure whether this was due to the painkillers or the abundance of prepositional phrases, but I do recall that the entity itself had something to do with Yahoo.)

The voice assured me that I was immediately eligible for some $200 worth of gift cards and all I had to do was… (again, this requirement of action, even in the abstract, caused my brain to shut down momentarily).

I asked a couple more questions and each one was followed by, “Yes, well…” (sound of shuffling script pages)… and a surprisingly forthcoming answer.  I began to suspect that solicitors were not allowed to lie.

Suddenly the game was no longer challenging for either of us, and the voice asked, most politely, to speak to Mr. David Hicks.  Even as I assured him that Mr. David was also not interested in his generous offer, I was thinking about the identity attached to the voice and about the nature of commerce that bubbles just under the crust of our information driven society often undetected, at least by those like me who live fairly sheltered lives.

Somewhere, probably on the other side of the planet, a human being spent several hours each day/night dealing with people like me and people unlike me.  Some would be rude.  Some would be delighted by their luck.  Some would realize that this might be the best job available to the voice right now and that it was important for his job security for him to conclude each call as efficiently as possible.

I wondered if the voice got any credit for keeping me on the line a few extra seconds or if he was penalized somehow when these seconds did not lead to a successful conclusion.  I wondered what I would do if the only job I could get was talking to strangers on the phone for hours at a time about things most of them did not want to talk about. 

I said, “Thank you , but I am not interested,”  and hung up the phone. 

I repositioned myself physically and wondered about the organism that is our planet, the combined cultures, economies, policies, oil spills, earthquakes, personalities, frailties, talents, technologies, vices , visions and voices that make up the world community.  And I wondered if there was any hope that she still had the ability to heal herself.