Say What?

I spent about ten minutes on the phone yesterday, rescheduling a routine checkup with my geriatric specialist. Geriatric specialist? In simpler terms, an old guy doctor. 

The ten minute wait was all right. Indeed it was less than I expected. A couple of times a voice broke in offering a call back (without losing my place in the queue) rather than further time on hold. I didn't want to risk that. With my luck, as I was using my business phone as a personal line (I'm the boss, I can do it) I feared being caught on another call. 

What concerned me was hearing what I thought I must have heard wrong, but sure sounded right. The disembodied computer voice said, "If you would like to continue to hold, we will take your call when it is convenient to us."

They meant, in the order it was received. They must have, right? It would be pretty blatant to say what I thought they said, the old saying the quiet part out loud. I'm sure I heard it wrong.

So while I'm at it, perhaps I should make an appointment for a hearing aid too.

The Joke's On Me

I am getting older. As such I'm beginning to realize how often the joke's on me (quiet, Ron).

I've talked a lot about watching Rifftrax, a movie parody site where they mock movies, TV shows, short films and what all. Last weekend I watched several Rifftrax offerings with my son in Ohio, one of The Ohio Cosgriffs. As usual, I laughed at many of the jokes.

One of the jokes involved the Internet. It was that a character was so old that he still typed www before website addresses. I laughed at that, well, because it was clear I was supposed to. Yet I didn't quite get the point.

Back here in Detroit I tested that joke. And sure enough, you don't have to type www before a web address. You just type weather.com or aol.com and there it is. I just tried it again: I typed mudhens.com, exactly like that, and was taken immediately to the Toledo Mud Hens web site as I now fully expected.

So the old guy joke was on me. But I had to laugh at the time, if only to cover myself.