David Sedaris - Barrel Fever and Other Stories

"We've been observing your calling patterns, Mr. Heck, and notice that you seem to have several European friends. Did you realize that our company can save you up to twenty-three percent on overseas calls?"

I wound up switching to her company because, seeing as I had made a commitment to change, it seemed cowardly not to honor it. After our conversation I hung up the phone, expecting it to ring again a few minutes later. I thought I was on a roll and that who knows? anyone might call, anyone at all.

The phone didn't ring again until sometime around ten in the evening, by which point I was pretty well potted. It was a woman's voice and she started in immediately saying, "All right now, I realize you probably don't remember who I am, do you?" She gave me a moment to guess but I could not begin to identify her.

"It's me, Trudy Chase. I used to be Trudy Cousins. Chase is my married name even though I'm no longer married ifthat makes any sense! Anyway, I don't live in Piedmont anymore but I still have the good oldPost-Democrat delivered to my door every day and that's where I read the obituary on your mother. I know it's been a while but I just wanted to tell you that I'm very sorry to hear about it."

I didn't know how to respond.

"You really don't remember me, do you?" she said. "It's me, crazy Trudy who used to sit beside you in Mr. Pope's senior English class. Remember me? I was the crazy one. I was the one who wrote 'Don't follow me I'm lost too' on the back of her graduation gown. It's me, crazy Trudy."

Suddenly I remembered her perfectly. Even at eighteen she struck me as hopeless.

"So, Trudy," I said. "What's going on?"

"Oh, you know me. I'm just as crazy as ever. No, I take that back I'm probablycrazier if you can believe that!"

I thought for a moment before saying, "Oh." Because that's really something I can't stand when people refer to themselves as crazy. The truly crazy are labeled so on the grounds that they see nothing wrong with their behavior. They forge ahead, lighting fires in public buildings and defecating in frying pans without the slightest notion that they are out of step with the rest of society. That, to me, is crazy. Calling yourself crazy is not crazy, only obnoxious.

Trudy went on to tell me that she's lived here in Manhattan for three months, having been transferred from the home office in Piedmont. She chuckled, adding that the people here think she's just about the craziest person they've ever met. She's so crazy that she planned an office party for Lincoln's birthday and petitioned her boss to free the slaves in the accounting department. And she even wore a tall hat and a fake beard! The members of her tenants association thought she should be committed after she hosted the last meeting. . by candlelight!

"Ha, ha," I said. "That sounds pretty scary."

"Nothing scares me," she said. "That's how crazyI am."

On my silent TV I watched as a defeated wrestler shook his hairbrush at the referee, obviously screaming for a rematch. "Nothing?"

"Not a damned thing," she said. "Nada. Othing nay."

The very idea that, out of nowhere, a member of my 1975 graduating class would call meand speak pig latin created a mixed sense of repulsion and endless possibilities.

Trudy spoke of her involvement in any number of organizations. She is, for example, volunteering to walk the dogs of recent stroke victims. "I usually walk with a woman named Marcie, and, Jesus, if you thinkI'm crazy, you should meet her! We call ourselves the Poop Troop, and next week we're getting our uniforms. You should join us sometime."

I pictured myself wearing an "I brake for hydrants" T-shirt and a baseball cap decorated with a synthetic stool.

On top of everything else Trudy also finds the time to play on her company volleyball team, iron for her crazy arthritic neighbor, and teach underprivileged children to make fudge. She didn't say it in a boastful way. She wasn't looking for a medal or trying to make me feel selfish. She invited me over to her apartment for a get-together, but I bowed out, claiming I had a business meeting to attend.

"Well if your meetings are half as crazy as mine you're going to need all the luck you can get," she said.

She asked if she could call me after my meeting and I told her to hold on a moment as I had another call coming in. She's been holding for fifteen minutes now and I still can't make up my mind. I look over at my mother's card on the refrigerator. BE GOOD. But she never specified: Be good to whom? If I'm good to Trudy Chase, I'll tell her never to call me again. If I'm good to myself, I'll wind up making fudge and walking the dogs of stroke victims. Which is worse?

I RODE my bike to the boat pond in Central Park, where I bought myself a cup of coffee and sat down on a bench to read. I lit a cigarette and was enjoying myself when the woman seated twelve feet away, on the other side of the bench, began waving her hands before her face. I thought she was fighting off a bee.

She fussed at the air and called out, "Excuse me, do you mind if we make this a no-smoking bench?"

I don't know where to begin with a statement like that. "Do you mind ifwe make this a no-smoking bench?" There is no "we." Our votes automatically cancel one another out. What she meant was, "Do you mind ifI make this a no-smoking bench?" I could understand it it we were in an elevator or locked together in the trunk of a car, but this was outdoors. Who did she think she was? This woman was wearing a pair of sandals, which are always a sure sign of trouble. They looked like the sort of shoes Moses might have worn while he chiseled regulations onto stone tablets. I looked at her sandals and at her rapidly moving arms and I crushed my cigarette. I acted like it was no problem and then I stared at the pages of my book, hating her and Moses the two of them.

The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you'll look back and thank them for those precious fifteen seconds they just added to your life. What they don't understand is that those are just fifteen more seconds you can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge.

My school insurance expires in a few weeks so I made an appointment for a checkup. It's the only thing they'll pay for as all of my other complaints have been dismissed as "Cosmetic."

If you want a kidney transplant it's covered but if you desperately need a hair transplant it's "Cosmetic." You tell me.

I stood around the examining room for twenty minutes, afraid to poke around as, every so often, a nurse or some confused patient would open the door and wander into the room. And it's bad enough to be caught in your underpants but even worse to be caught in your underpants scratching out a valium prescription on someone else's pad.

When the doctor finally came he looked over my chart and said, "Hey, we have almost the exact same birthday. I'm one day younger than you!"

That did wonders for my morale. It never occurred to me that my doctor could be younger than me. Never entered my mind.

He started in by asking a few preliminary questions and then said, "Do you smoke?"

"Only cigarettes and pot," I answered.

He gave me a look. "Onlycigarettes and pot? Only?"

"Not crack," I said. "Never touch the stuff. Cigars either. Terrible habit, nasty."

I was at work, defrosting someone's freezer, when I heard the EPA's report on secondhand smoke. It was on the radio and they reported it over and over again. It struck me the same way that previous EPA reports must have struck auto manufacturers and the owners of chemical plants: as reactionary and unfair. The re-port accuses smokers, especially smoking parents, of criminal recklessness, as if these were people who kept loaded pistols lying on the coffee table, crowded alongside straight razors and mugs of benzene.