WANNA SEE THE STRAINED PEAS?

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Because I am a relatively new father, I am required by federal law to shoot roughly 300 hours of videotape of my child each week.

I am kind enough, however, not to make friends and family sit through hours and hours of videotape that I think is the most precious thing in the world, but that ranks right up there with death by steamroller on other people’s Enjoyability Scale. (“And here’s what strained peas look like two hours later!”)

But I will on occasion watch some of the videos of my daughter, if nothing else than to marvel at how one person can shake so much when videotaping. I have fairly steady hands, but if you put a video camera in them, my hands start to tremor like a Magic Fingers bed. The one plus side to it is that, on the rare occasion when others do watch the video, they get motion sickness, which, quite frankly, is kind of a cool power to have.

So, you may be asking, what is your point? Well, my point is that the video camera I have has a cable that runs directly to the VCR, so that I can play the videos straight from the camera. Or, rather, used to have a cable. When I went to play back a tape recently, I noticed that I was missing said cable. I looked everywhere in the house, including the 32,000 unpacked boxes from when we moved, but to no avail. It was clear to me that the cable had been sucked into the great void, the same void that has, throughout time, also claimed my wallet, sunglasses, and several pets.

Once I concluded that the cable was gone for good, I opted to try and purchase a new part. I went to the store where I bought the camera and explained my predicament. The store clerk looked at my camera and said, “Oh, no, we don’t carry those cables. Those are special.” Great. I buy the one camera with “special” parts. He gave me a toll free number to call, apparently the number of the Special Parts Warehouse.

I called the number and told them I wanted to order the cable. The woman on the other end of the line asked me what kind of camera I had. After I told her, she spouted back a long string of numbers, and told me that was the kind of cable I would need. “Now, that is the kind with one little pointy doo-hickie on the one end, and the three colored doo-hickies on the other end, right?” She said it was. It is that kind of high-tech talk that lets the customer service people know you are a serious customer.

Fast forward to a week later, when I received a package in the mail. I opened it up and, to my disappointment, found that there were three doo-hickies on both ends, not the three on one end and one on the other as I so plainly pointed out! (Yes, I did go ahead and see if I could make the part work, on the off chance that they accidentally sent me some super cable that may, I don’t know, get me premium channels or something. It wasn’t super.)

I called the company so that I could get the accurate part sent. As is commonplace, I was greeted with an automated attendant. And, of course, there was not an option that said, “If we screwed up your order, press five.” So I went to the old standby of pressing zero (that’s the short-cut to pretending you have a rotary phone). After a few minutes, someone answered the phone. I told her my problem, and she said, “Thank you, sir. I’ll transfer you.” After about five minutes of bad music interrupted every so often by a quick commercial plug, I decided to press zero again. Go back a few sentences ago, to the one that starts off “After a few minutes…” Read that section again seven times.

So, now that we’re caught up to where I was, you can imagine my patience was wearing thin. By the eighth time I had gone back into the loop, I waited for a person to answer and immediately said, “DO NOT TRANSFER ME!!!!”

“Sir?” was the response. I explained to the woman that I been sent into the perpetual loop of customer indifference, and that I did not want to be transferred again. I gave her three options: she could help me, she could get her supervisor to help me, or she could send me a check for $12 million to offset my troubles. She said she would try and help me, and added that they were having problems with their phone transfer, and that she was actually amazed I wasn’t getting disconnected each time. That comment alone begged for hours of commentary, but in the interest of getting the correct cable, I let it slide.

After many minutes of looking, she told me that she was going to get a parts specialist for me. I asked her if this meant she was going to transfer me. I think she took that as a threat, because she said, “Uh, no, sir, I’ll just get one to come over here.”

In a few short moments, someone picked up the call and figured out what I needed. (Indeed, this was a parts pro, because when I said I mentioned the doohickie count, he knew exactly what the part was. Why they don’t have him answering these calls is a mystery to me.)

Eventually, I got the correct part, and I am now free to watch videos of my daughter whenever I want. I’m glad that I can check out my videos once again, because I’ve got a lot of strained pea footage to catch up on.

E-mail me at mwg1234@yahoo.com.