#25 - Divestiture
There was a time not all that long ago when life was considerably simpler. A pleasant walk to the mailbox was something to look forward to. Mailboxes used to harbor good news - postcards from faraway places, the occasional treat of a new seed catalog, even surprise packages tied up with string. The mail was fun.
Not anymore, or not very often anyhow. Now I approach my mailbox with a certain amount of dread. When I pull open its door, there is a stack of stuff in there that’s calculated to make me feel frustrated, cheated and broke.
The greater balance of the box’s daily offering is unsolicited bulk mail. “Bulk” is absolutely the right word. It is an outrageous volume of junk, and it represents nothing more to me than so many wasted trees that could have been utilized to far greater purpose in the world, even if left standing. Left standing, their utility would be much better realized by itchy moose looking for scratching posts. Is it progress? Toward what?
The next layer of mail in the box is composed of the shiny, colorful catalogs offering a wealth and variety of things to get your mind going: everything from fancy household gadgets and fabulous tools nobody deserves to own, to rose bushes, smoked hams and life insurance from Omaha. There appears to be nothing you can't get through the mail, including a measured degree of the taboo. The problem is that I am a person who needs and wants stuff, and it seems I need or want a good percentage of whatever it is they're trying to sell me. Worst of all, I can't have any of it. "It just ain't possible," I lecture myself. “With a million or so in the bank, you might go on a splurge once in a while, but for now, Buster, you're best off just rolling up that catalog and starting a fire with it.” (Sad thing is they even have these neat magazine rollers made for just that purpose.)
The most awful part, on the walk back from the mailbox, is sorting the bills. They are not the modest requests for payment for two pails of creosote and a roll of chicken wire or the old-fashioned light bill that amounted to 50¢ a day. Those times are gone. Bills today are a direct reflection of the cost of living in an affluent society and, in many cases, seem as disproportionate as the outrageous Pentagon expenditures on nuts and bolts we hear about on the Nightly News. They are so many and arrive with such depressing regularity that the countryman at his mailbox today rarely has the once carefree look on his face. Instead, he plods head down, his face frozen with a look of dutiful resignation.
The troubling height to which modern day pricing and billing practices have risen is embodied in the monthly telephone bill. What a price we now pay just to gossip with a neighbor! The telephone company calls it “divestiture,” explaining all the advantages of the free enterprise system, how lucky we are and what a good deal we're getting. They could have fooled me. The new bills average six or seven pages in a fat envelope, and they're not much less confusing than our amazing income tax forms. In actuality, I guess I'm paying whatever they demand . . . and to three or four different companies. All of them throw in charming little charges for this and that, and by the time I’m done trying to figure it all out, I am spent, cross-eyed and broke. That’s how it feels. The Dictionary of American Business Mumbo-Jumbo takes great liberties with the true meaning of that word, “divestiture,” defining it as "The simple act of dazzling them with footwork and taking them for all they're worth."
Our modest local phone book has 96 White Pages. There are approximately 350 phone numbers on a page, each representing I assume a separate billing. That's 33,600 billings per month. Multiplied by the 6 depressing pages in each valued customer’s bill, local citizens are quite justified in shouting a great, collective “Jumpin’ Jiminy!!!” Their mail boxes have just delivered to them over 200,000 pages of phone bills, explaining in confusing and painful detail the burden of their debt to “the company,” whoever they all are.
Letters, picture postcards, once even a basket of strawberries – that’s when a trip to the mailbox was worth it.