Visiting the local cable company customer service center is a cross between visiting the DMV, applying for social services and reporting your passport stolen at a US Embassy in a third world country. This is the reason I never had TiVo. They wouldn't deliver the box outside of the hours 9-5, Monday thru Friday and I refused to get the vaccines required for pickup.
That is until Mr. J decided that we had to install the most ridiculous home theatre system in the history of the universe. Ridiculous in that he decided to take an internet crash course in installation and I want to throw remote controls at him from my perch on the couch. As I write I have already been interrupted three times while he asks me to plug in something, untangle something else and remember that Center is Far Right and Surround Right is Middle.
Yours truly is the only one on our account, hence three phone calls throughout the course of the day, "Have you picked up the box yet?"
"No. I could get the swine flu."
"Just go. I need that box today. At least you're insured so if you do get it we can afford the meds and if you die I will be able to mourn to prerecorded TV."
"I'm very busy and important. You pick it up."
"I would. If I was on the account. Would you rather call customer service and spend an hour or drop by and pick it up on your way home?"
"I hate you."
I pulled into the parking lot and sighed as I stared at the conversion vans filling the first three rows, children spilling from them with juicy cups and food in their hair. I walked into the tan concrete building to find a security guard sitting on a chair to keep the violence at a minimum, "What are you here for?"
"I need to get TiVo."
"We don't have TiVo. You'll have to settle for DVR."
"Ok. Who do I talk to?" I looked around, hoping to see a group of Best Buy Geeks or Apple guys with lanyards and a desire to upsell me an iPhone.
He pointed over my shoulder to a machine that spat out numbers, "Get a number, have a seat and someone will be with you shortly."
I turned to find that the menu was in Spanish and turned around, "Um, which one do I push for TiVo?"
"DVR?"
"Right."
"Third one down."
"Fantastic."
I used my knuckle to push the third one down, afraid that if I used my fingertip and then mistakenly touched my face I would end up with pink eye or a raging case of herpes by morning. I stepped over two little girls that were rolling on their bellies with ring pops in their mouths and found a chair that did not look like someone died and decomposed in it. I looked up to find that the entire row of gangsters to my right were staring at me and I flashed to the movie "Taken" where foreigners are sold into the sex trade. I imagined that I would be pulled from under the bank of chairs, the little girls with the cherry red mouths watching me while Liam Neeson told me to calm down, "They're going to take you." I'd likely end up in the back of one of the conversion vans in the parking lot and leave behind a husband who would mourn his inability to record TV shows without commercials.
I began to rifle through my "pacifier," known by some as a cell phone. I checked Facebook, Twitter and wondered if I should post a status update, "If I don't update my status in thirty minutes, my last known whereabouts were the corner of Rancho and Washington in the Cox Customer Service building."
My number was called and I made my way to a makeshift table at the front of the room, an afterthought. Windows 1-8 were in a teller row, while windows 9 and 10 were card tables with computers. "Window 9" was written on a sheet of printer paper and scotch taped to the back of the monitor.
A forty-ish black woman with braids asked what she could do to help me.
"I need TiVo."
"We can set you up for DVR."
"Oh, right. Yes, please."
She clicked on some things, typed in some things and bobbed her head while the Isley brothers crooned from a TV screen behind her, which was set in a bank. Every screen was a different channel, but they were all muted. Soul Classics was not.
I motioned to the screen, "Is that your channel?"
She smiled sweetly, "No. I like the R&B channel, but the girl at Window 10 likes Soul. It's good though. Who can go wrong with the Isley Brothers?"
"My channel is 905. R&B. My ex-boyfriend set it up so whenever we turn on the TV that channel comes on automatically. It drives my husband nuts because he can't figure out how to re-program it and it's been five years."
She laughed, "He doesn't like R&B?"
"It's not his favorite, but he'll listen to my stations for a while. Until someone says 'shorty.' That's the rule. If the song has the word shorty in it he gets to change the station."
She laughed and leaned in, "How old is he?"
"34."
"Ah, not his language. What does he listen to?"
"Country. Drives me bananas. I like some of it. They're good storytellers, but half the time we're driving down the road and I'm crying because someone's grandfather taught him about life and died."
"My dad listened to country. I like a few bands. You ever hear that Rascal Flatts song about how if you play a country song backwards you get your wife back, your car back...? That song is hilarious! My dad really influenced my love of music, so I listen to everything. I'm going to see the Doobie Brothers soon!"
"Oh, if you like the Doobie Brothers you have to check out Earl Turner at Palace Station. I made my husband go. He sings some old school MoTown, R&B and soul. You would love it! At first he was like, 'I can't believe you're making me go to this,' but he was dancing and singing along by the end."
"I'll have to take my sister to that. She used to get so mad because me and my dad would go to shows together. I told her the other day that I was excited to see the Doobie Brothers because me and dad saw it once. She got really mad, 'I don't want to talk about that.' See, she went off to college so she never came to the shows with us. Now our dad is passed on and it hurts her that I have memories that she doesn't."
"Well, they're your memories to have. I'm the same way with my dad. He lives in Florida. We used to go driving when I'd had a rough day or something bad had happened. We'd listen to the radio and sing along. He used to sing Beatles songs to me all the time. I saw Love by Cirque du Soleil and cried because it reminded me of my dad and I missed him so much. Oh, and I saw Hall and Oates with an old boyfriend. He was quite a bit older than me and I was singing and dancing and he asked me how I knew all the words. I told him it was because my dad loved Hall and Oates. He didn't like that so much."
We both laughed, "Girl, I bet he didn't!" She pushed a new DVR box toward me, "You're all set. Everything is programmed. It was fun talking to you."
"You too! Have fun at the Doobie Brothers and make sure you go see Earl Turner!"
"I will! And, you tell your man that you are his shorty."
I laughed. She laughed. We both sank into the memories of our fathers, the memories of music and I didn't even notice the bank of dirty chairs or anyone else as I floated out the door. I was simply high on the human condition, a simple conversation and the melody of life lived out loud.
I hummed all the way home.
Tomorrow I'm going to call my dad.