News From Hawkhill Acres

I’m taking a little break from banging my head on my keyboard and howling, because it’s not proving as therapeutic as I thought it might be when I started doing it about fifteen minutes ago. I’ll be darned if I can figure out why it doesn’t work like it did when I was 4, but maybe I’ve forgotten the technique. Back then, I mostly did it out of frustration, I suppose. Hmm, doesn’t seem like anything has changed.

The reasons I applied headboard to keyboard with feeling are several. Daughter’s narrow escape from Death by Art Form was the beginning. The US Postal Service changing our address from Hawkhill Acres to Hell thereby making it necessary for me to converse in Ham operator code over a bad phone connection was the second. I think the third was when I went to get the mail in the rental car and had to stick my head out the window to back up, because the lack of visibility out of the windshield is exceeded only by the lack out the back. It’s just been one of those weeks today.

The reason we seem to be living in Hell instead of Chez Hawkins is because a relative who spent the summer here moved out and changed his address. Unfortunately, the USPS decided that we all moved out and went with him. While that seems like an attractive idea to me today, it’s not what we did.

Apparently though, our mail has moved to his address. This had an unfortunate domino effect on some important documents that I was expecting and also on the copy of Secular Homeschooling Magazine that has my article in it. Neither showed up when they were supposed to. The first, we’ll call it ID, was sent back to the company it had been sent from, because they had marked it “Do Not Forward.” The second, the magazine, was probably thrown away, because they don’t forward magazine class mail.

I can email about the magazine, but I had to call about the documents. I got a very nice gentleman named Hari, I believe. Throughout our call, his politeness and patience never wavered, even when the connection got so bad on his end that I was forced to resort to spelling out almost every word I said.

“I can see that you are changing your address only yesterday to a new address,” he began, “So you no longer exist at Hawkhill Acres, but now you are having an existence at A Pseudonym For My Relative’s Address.“

I tried to explain about the relative’s move and how the postal service had misconstrued it as a mass migration and he seemed to grasp this right away.

“Ah,” he said, “This was not a movement of the completeness of your family. It was just the one person who exited to the new existence. We will change back your address and all will be well with the sending of the paperworks.”

That’s when the trouble started. I gave him my address and he got the street part just fine. The town, however, gave him a lot of trouble.

“We are having quite an insincere connection with this phone of mine,” he said, “If you would spell this town of yours, perhaps I will better understand its lettering.”

I spelled it slowly: S-H-E-R-M-A-N.

“Okay,” he said, “So that is F as in Foxtrot, K as in Kilo, E as in Echo, R as in Roger, N as in November, K as in Kilo and M as in Mike?”

That’s when the first impulse to bang my head on the keyboard started.

“No,” I said, “That’s S as in Silly, H as in Human, E as in Edward - you got that one right - R as in Robert - you got that one right too - M as in Mud, A as in Alice and N as in Normal.”

There was a long pause and I wondered if Hari was still there.

“I do not mean to be critical of your training,” he said, “But an unusual choice in your wording is making it very hard for me to figure what it is you are spelling out to me. Do you not know the Ham code?”

I confessed that I didn’t. (I’m such a slacker.) Hari said we could try to go on anyway, but I could tell that he was very disappointed in me and my training. So we soldiered on and after several minutes of this, we both cheered when he spelled my town the right way.

“Okay,” he said jubilantly, “Now there is only the matter of the zip code.”

I gave it to him and he got it the first time, which is good because I don’t know the Ham code for numbers.

“Oh!” he said, sounding a little upset. “If only I had remembered that the zip brings forth the town name on my screen. That would have saved a little time, would it not?”

Yeah. Like fifteen minutes of conversation that made Abbot and Costello’s Who’s On First sound like Shakespeare.

I’m not bitter though. At least I know that the documents, which have to be here and signed and sent back by next Wednesday or my financial future will be akin to General Motors’, will be here in time. Or at my relative’s house. Or somewhere else completely different. If you get them, let me know.

Excuse me. I have to get back to my keyboard.

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