Just a few moments ago the phone rang. It was the 800 Service for Verizon. They have called me relentlessly for the last week or so, ringing up several times a day. Their mission is to collect $73.31.
You see, I cancelled my Verizon service on January 21st, and contrary to the information I was given at that time, I will not receive a refund for the balance of the payment period. Quite the opposite, I must pay for the entire billing cycle in which I cancelled. Upon investigation it appears that I had six days of service in which I used about 4 minutes of cell phone time. Yet their "fine print," and that is a quote from their 800 service representative, says I have to pay the entire month.
I'll skip the fascinating details on how there is nothing they can do, policies, and no one higher up that I can talk to. They finally gave me an address which I could write to (that tells you how serious they are about resolving any dispute I might have. Snail mail. HA!). I'll include here for you:
Executive Relations Department
Verizon Wireless
3601 Converse Drive
Wilmington, NC 28403
I had to act like a real jerk to get that information and I fully intended to write them every day this last week. Life intervened. I think the Corporation knows this will happen and they probably make millions and millions of dollars every year on just such cases as mine. It probably costs them next to nothing to call me relentlessly on my home phone requesting this money they NEVER billed me for. I'm certain after a set number of calls it will go to a collection agency and damage my credit report. They wouldn't hear of my offer to pay them for the six days I had service.
Of course not.
So this was my senior moment. I was sitting on the step into my garage dutifully sorting my recycling when the call came. It had something to do with my sense of duty, my recycling bags, my lowered thermostat, the low flush toilet, my high gas mileage automobile. It all kind of boiled up on me and at that moment, I gave up. I realized if I bothered to write the letter it would lay in limbo till the collection agency started calling and then I would wish I had paid the $73.31. I simply didn't have the energy to fight a losing battle.
I wrote the check and let the anger sit in my belly for a few minutes before thinking about the variety of senior moments I experience daily. Too tired to fight a losing battle; dizzy and imbalanced, not from drinking, because who could tolerate that anymore, I'd end up flat on the ground; overwhelmed by the fool's maze called Health care; crushed by inflation; outwitted by investment professionals and their multi billionaire firms; too slow to keep up with my grand children's technological expertise; completely stumped by the prospect of living on my savings and retirement; and heartbroken to finally understand, deeply, how it feels to be overlooked because of my age.
Let me make something clear here. I'm not even very old yet. Almost sixty-four, I have started worrying about people more senior than I. My friends in their seventies and eighties who live alone are terribly frightened. Even so, I know we are a resourceful and accomplished generation.
Baby Boomers.
Once we were the tip of sword. We forged all kinds of political, social, sexual, and gender norms. We were something to behold. We were the focus of everything. Now, people are calling us a burden. Since 10,000 of us retire everyday, I'm thinking they will start developing even more sophisticated methods of exterminating us. That is a very dark thought, indeed.
All my evil twenty something jokes about "snowbirds" have come back to haunt me. I haven't migrated but I'm carrying the snow just under the last golden brown rinse I put on my hair and I am haunted.
Haunted by these moments.
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