Feeling happy about my Christmas trip and seeing the Dallas Cowboys, I open the letter from Jay L. Lamb and prepare to feel worse. I will concede that this preemptive (I love the word “preemptive”) feeling of dread is an effect of years past, when Jay L. Lamb, under my father’s direction, would write me letters telling me what to do and threatening to cut me off from my father’s support if I did not follow his directions. Since my father died and my mother yelled at Jay L. Lamb and instructed him never to speak to me without her permission, I have not had any trouble from him. Feeling dread at his letters is what Dr. Buckley would call a “conditioned response,” and those are hard to break, like habits. I’m trying. I will try harder.
Edward:
As I relayed to your mother and she asked me to relay to you, I have found private health coverage for you now that you are no longer employed by the Herald-Gleaner. I will direct the human resources department at the newspaper to suspend your participation in the COBRA program. Though this new insurance will be more expensive than your employer-provided plan, it is in any case less costly than COBRA. I will be in touch soon with plan details and your insurance card. Please let me know if anything has changed on the medical front.
Also, some additional good news—the strategic steps we took to position your money in late 2008 have paid off handsomely. We have recovered the recessionary losses and then some, and your holdings as of this writing total $6,123,817. It’s safe to say that you need not work another day in your life.
Jay L. Lamb has a talent for saying something that is innocuous (I love the word “innocuous”) and offensive at the same time. I appreciate his getting me new insurance and taking care of my money, and I will endeavor to tell him so. As for his comment about my not needing to work, it just goes to show that while Jay L. Lamb may be my lawyer, he doesn’t know me. My father made that money in the oil business and in investments after he retired and became a politician. Jay L. Lamb thinks my money is what keeps me alive. He’s a fool. But I won’t tell him that.
I go into the room adjacent to my bedroom, where my computer desk sits, and I compose a letter to Jay L. Lamb. I’d like to get this in the mail as soon as possible so all the necessary details of my new health coverage can be put in place.
Jay L. Lamb:
Thank you for your note of the 7th. I am writing to you to fulfill your request about details on the medical front. Today, I saw Dr. Rex Helton at the St. Vincent Healthcare Broadwater clinic, and he has informed me that I have type 2 diabetes. I have gone to Albertsons and picked up the medications that Dr. Rex Helton recommends as a deterrent for this new condition, and I am sure Dr. Rex Helton can provide any details you need beyond this letter.
Thank you for attending to this and for the update about my money.
As long as I’m writing letters, I might as well compose one to Mr. Withers at the Billings Herald-Gleaner. I have spent three weeks and a day thinking about the circumstances of how I was fired (or involuntarily separated), and I have built a substantive case for being rehired as soon as possible.
Mr. Withers:
As you may recall, you had to involuntarily separate me from the Billings Herald-Gleaner on November 16th. At our last meeting, which you euphemistically called an exit interview, you suggested that this was a result of “business challenges” and not a commentary on the quality of my work.
While I am not privy to the newspaper’s business challenges, I think that once you reconsider things, you will see that I should continue to be employed as the night-shift maintenance expert.
I have included here a short list of the things that need to be done at the Herald-Gleaner. All of these things would have been done by me had I remained an employee:
• The steps on the south side of the building need to be squared off with a liquid concrete bonding agent. As it is, these steps are a safety hazard.
• The landing on the north entrance needs to be retiled.
• Given the unseasonably warm December we have been enjoying, there is time to prune the trees on all sides of the building.
• Again, given the unseasonable warmth, the parking lot lines can be repainted.
As I wrote earlier, this is just a sampling of the chores left undone by my involuntary separation. By the time I finish these items, there will no doubt be many more things for me to do. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that maintenance at so large a plant is an ongoing concern. I stand ready to assume my previous position and assist you with these tasks.
I look forward to hearing from you.
I am proud of this letter. I fill out the envelopes for Jay L. Lamb and Mr. Withers, seal the letters inside them, affix a stamp upon each, and clip them to the mailbox so they go out first thing tomorrow.
For the first time in three weeks and a day, I feel content. I like it. I feel so content, in fact, that I will lie down for a nap after I take my medicine. It’s not even 3:00 p.m.
When I wake up with a start at 10:48 p.m., four unrelated thoughts are in my head.
The first is that I have to pee really badly. I run into the bathroom, which fortunately is adjacent to my bedroom, and I just manage to get my pants down before the pee comes. It’s like my tallywhacker (I love the word “tallywhacker”) is a miniature fire hose, the way the pee shoots out of me. It is a clear, strong stream, and just when I think I’m about to be done, more comes out. I don’t think I’ve ever peed this much, although I must concede that it has never occurred to me to measure my pee output on a consistent basis. While the idea has some appeal—I love keeping data on things—I quickly recognize this as one of the compulsions that Dr. Buckley always told me I had to work hard to control.
In any case, I can now see that Dr. Helton was right: my new medicine will make me pee a lot. Not enough to lose 31.08 percent of my body weight, but a lot. (I just made a joke. I’m pretty funny sometimes.)
My second thought concerns the new TV show I’m trying to get into. When I call it a new show, I mean it’s new to me. It’s actually an old show called Adam-12, and it was produced by Jack Webb, the star of Dragnet, so it ought to be good. My mother gave me the DVDs for the first season of the show back in February, after I got the news about Dr. Buckley’s retirement. My mother thought it might cheer me up, but it didn’t. I just put the box on a shelf in my den. It wasn’t until Mr. Withers fired me twenty-two days ago that I started watching Adam-12, since I had nothing else to do. While I can definitely see some similarities to Dragnet, in that it’s about Los Angeles cops, I’m a little frustrated by the show. That’s what I’m thinking about now. Take as an example the episode I was supposed to watch tonight, if I hadn’t fallen asleep. It’s the twenty-second episode, and it’s called “Log 152: A Dead Cop Can’t Help Anyone.” It comes immediately after “Log 102: We Can’t Just Walk Away From It,” and immediately before “Log 12: He Was Trying to Kill Me.” I’m sure you can see what my trouble is. The stupid logs don’t go in order. I guess the characters, Officer Pete Malloy (played by Martin Milner) and Officer Jim Reed (played by Kent McCord), are all right, although they’re no Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon. But this show leaves a lot to be desired in terms of consistency.