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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, March 6, 2000
Some issues you can't duck
I'm not sure I'm up to this. For that matter, I'm not sure you're up to this. But one can't keep this sort of thing bottled up inside indefinitely. The old primal scream didn't get the job done. Neither did the breathing exercises. Ditto Tae-Bo.
So what's left? Dumping it in your lap, is what.
This is a story that is guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings until they snap. (We assume no liability for any heartstrings that may experience tensile failure as a result of reading the following. Kids, do not attempt this at home.)
It is a story of a boy and his duck.
No, no, no: not a boy and his dog. A boy and his duck. When I say "duck," I mean "duck." Are we clear on that?
All right: I am a little edgy. A shade testy. A bit irascible. But this boy has been without his duck now for about a week, and he's not holding up all that well, thank you very much.
Not a real duck, you understand. No no no. Sad to say, there isn't room in my life for a real duck these days. No: I refer, of course, to my duck phone.
Not a phone with which to call ducks, you understand: That would be downright silly. I mean, I can borrow a duck call from the Outdoors Writer anytime and blow away as many of the web-footed brutes as I wish. Not that I would, you understand: That stuff is best left to the professionals.
Where was I? Oh, yes: the duck phone. What it is, is a phone cunningly concealed within a duck decoy.
No, seriously: I remember it as if it were yesterday. I happened to be ambling through the phone display at poor old Best Products (now defunct these many years). As a rule, phones don't do much for me. I've seen 'em all: Harley-Davidson phones. Dallas Cowboys helmet phones. Mickey Mouse phones.
Yawn.
But then I saw it: the duck phone! Made from Real Tree Wood by Taiwanese craftsmen. With little red eyes that light up when you pick up the back - er, receiver. And . . . and . . . it doesn't ring: IT QUACKS!
The rest, as they say, is history. It's sort of a blur, actually. I don't recall whether I bought it myself, or whined about it so much that my family bought it for my birthday.
At any rate, in the fullness of time, the boy got his duck. And what a difference it has made.
You may not have given this much thought, but having a duck phone on your desk sort of sets you apart from the common herd.
Or do I mean "flock?"
Be that as it may.
There is more to it, you should know, than mere one-upmanship. Oh, granted, many of my colleagues look upon my duck phone with undisguised envy, seething with chagrin: What, they ask themselves, has he done to deserve a duck phone? (After years as a journalist, you learn to pick up on these vibrations, you see.)
That's their problem. Fact is, there is a utilitarian side to the duck phone experience as well. See, when my phone rings - er, quacks - I know it's my phone. All the other phones here give off the standard incoming-call trill, which is OK as far as it goes. Trouble is, all those trills sound alike. Between that and the quirky acoustics in the building, this is a recipe for mass disorientation.
I have suggested - repeatedly - that management study and absorb The Lesson of the Duck Phone. I have suggested - tactfully - that every phone here should be retrofitted with its own distinctive "voice," as it were. Thus, one phone could trumpet like an elephant, another could laugh like a hyena, another could roar like an enraged lioness, another could cackle like a grackle . . .
The possibilities are endless. However, I can't spare much time for promoting the scheme. Not now. My duck is, how you say, hors de combat, the victim of a faulty switchhook.
No big deal? So I thought, and took it to a fix-it place. Thirty bucks later, my duck and I were back in business.
I thought.
When the dreaded switchhook malaise struck again, I sought out a techno-guru within these very walls, and he is even now at work on the case. He says.
Meanwhile, I am a boy without a duck. Anybody out there got a sure-fire fix? Contact me soonest: I'm good for it. Just send me the . . . uh . . . bill. As it were.
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772 or be e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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