Sometimes, give up before it’s too late

Maude McDaniel, Columnist

Yesterday I got a call from an old friend of mine. At least she said she was an old friend, and she certainly was friendly enough to be an old friend.

However, in the end, as it turned out, she was a saleswoman, calling about a magazine subscription. (She had called me two years ago, which explains the old friend connection.)

She told me that my subscription was going to expire in a couple of months. Surely, I didn’t want to risk its running out so soon. It’s a good magazine (which, I can only hope, does not know what is going on in its name), so I said, “Of course I don’t. Just a moment, please.” I checked the expiration date against a list of all my subscriptions and their expiration dates which I keep near the telephone.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “According to my records, this subscription doesn’t run out for another two years.”

“Oh,” she said. “Someone must have given me the wrong date.” The line went dead, because my old friend didn’t even bother to say goodby.

That’s okay. I’m sure our relationship will be renewed again soon.

And she’s not the only one. Several other times I have received calls about magazine subscriptions that suffered from incorrect input in the matter of expiration dates. The only difference among them has been that the other callers were not old friends. And some hung up even faster!

Nothing I can do is going to stop these calls. Nor the ones in which someone thanks me for contributing to a charity I have never given a penny to, and then boldly asks for more.When all is said and done, I am not complaining. More than anything I’m resigned. Because I know that there are certain things in this world that you’re not going to change — and there’s no use bellyaching about them.

Here’s something else I can’t help marveling at: nine-hundred-dollar fashion purses! (Or, for that matter, five-hundred-dollar jeans.) Wouldn’t you think, if someone didn’t like the fifty-dollar purse in the BonTon, she would at least get the eighty-dollar one instead. (Not that I would). Then, if she still wanted to spend a total of $900, she could give the difference to, say, the Red Cross?

But this is another issue you’ll always lose. I suppose down through history the rich folks had to buy the thousand-drachma tunic or the high-end chariot, just because they could. If the economy tanks, as so many predict (don’t despair — many others don’t), there will still be somebody who goes for the 25-room third house for a family of two — although as some have found out lately, perhaps not for long.

Sorry. I still can’t figure out why anyone really needs any income past the first million or two. But then, what do I know?

Here's another. The household moth problem. I recently noticed a huge increase in these little chaps, and I was worried until I realized that it wasn’t moths at all — it was floaters in my eyes. I checked with my eye doctor, and he okayed my eyes — and then I went home and found more moths zooming around than when I had left. Obviously it wasn’t JUST my eyes.

What it was was birdfeed. I didn’t discover this until the house was practically off its foundations with all the action inside. Finally, I uncovered an old bag of finch seed I had left from last year on the top of the dryer. Somebody had managed to make a hole or two in it and over the months that was all that was needed. The place was a mess.

At this moment, then, with the birdfeed cleaned up, the aerial high jinks indoors have pretty much subsided. However, I have had this kind of experience before. The one thing I am certain about is that, moths being moths, bless their little hearts, I will have it again.

There are so many cases like that. Like the RSVP problem,which I mentioned in an earlier column. I’m disappointed that neither of my readers has spread the word about this. I guess I should face it. There are simply some people who don’t know French. They think “Respondez sil vous plait” means “Don’t answer, on pain of death.”

Then there are my delirious wisterias. I have this beautiful wisteria bush that is fine in its place, but it persists in coming up all over the yard. Currently it has invaded my rhododendron, and no matter how much I pull it out it comes back again. You can just bet your buttercups that if I had planted it there on purpose, it would die out the minute I touched it.

Did I say this before?

Sometimes you just can’t win.

Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears in the Times-News on alternate Sundays.