Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

The flower isn't really bigger than Una.
Forced perspective, baby.

I would be out running errands right now if it weren't for the Comcast truck parked behind my house. And it's not even for me.

Let me explain.

On Monday, I drove to the post office as soon as I'd finished my morning dog walk with our doggie, Una. I wanted to mail our wedding invitations, which we'd prepared over the weekend.

But when I handed over the box of invites to the postal clerk, he spotted an important oversight: none of them had return addresses.

So I raced home to affix return address labels to all of the envelopes. While I was doing so, I turned on my favorite network, TLC, primarily for the background noise.

About five minutes later, Una started barking at a noise out back. I peered out the window and saw a service truck parked in the alley. This is not unusual, since we live on a street of row houses, and our building apparently hosts the main connector box for all the cable on our street. I'm constantly spotting people in Comcast or RCN shirts climbing up a ladder to access it.

This time was a little different, though. Instead of a ladder, the clueless cable guy was using a bucket, operated either by himself or from the truck below. He had a lot of difficulty negotiating, what with my neighbor's second floor deck and the various low-hanging cables, in which he kept getting entangled. It's a miracle he didn't pull off my neighbor's window box.

Unlike the other cable workers, this guy was from neither Comcast nor RCN. Rather, he was wearing a tan shirt with white lettering on it that was hard to read from where I was standing. All I could see was that it did say "Cable Company", but there was another word above it that I couldn't make out. I might never have taken a second look except for what happened next.

As I was busy affixing labels, the TV went fuzzy. Not just one station, either: all of it. Too much to be a coincidence, so I ran to the window and called out, "Hey, you just disconnected my cable."

The cable person, who was driving a white truck without any visible logo, gave me an annoyed face and started negotiating his bucket clumsily back up to the connector box.

"Most people use a ladder to access that," I told him. No reply.

A short time later, the cable cleared up and our service returned. I ran to the window to let him know. He had a suspicious story, telling me that our cable had been mislabeled with another house number, and that he'd fixed it. Yeah, right.

I've looked for other possible cable providers in our area and can't figure out who he might have been. None of the other Philadelphia cable operators seem to offer service in our suburb, and none of them have tan as their key color. Maybe he's actually from some sort of Mission: Impossible type organization, engaged in surveillance of the neighborhood squirrels (which like to climb up our building and eat nuts on the air conditioner). I only hope this shady cable guy doesn't return.

And to think: if I hadn't left the return address labels off the invitations, I never would have known why our cable was out, and I would have had to wait for a RCN technician to arrive and fix it.

Afterwards, I told The Gryphon about the incident. He told me that I should call our cable company, RCN, and inform them of the problem. So I talked to a techie, explaining exactly what had happened. He told me he'd alert the workers in that area to look for any other problems caused by this guy.

So this is why, as long as the Comcast truck sits out back, I'm reluctant to leave. After all, one stupid mistake and I'm cut off, unable to earn my living (we have cable Internet) and (gasp!) equally unable to watch the 12 p.m. episode of TLC's What Not to Wear.

The Gryphon and I had considered taking a long walk and having a picnic in a local park yesterday, Independence Day, but we were thwarted by bad weather. It was a cloudy day, and thunderstorms were predicted for the afternoon, although they didn't materialize until the evening. Of course, we couldn't have known that.

Fortunately, I did manage to get in a dog walk, where I took the flower picture above. Una and I passed neighbors, wearing red, white and blue, as they prepared for the annual Fourth of July parade.

I didn't have my digital camera with me, but I snapped a picture with my camera phone of a particularly jazzed up front yard.

Just a short distance down the block, I got another picture of a family hanging up a huge flag next to their front door.

I spoke to them about it and discovered that the flag was actually the burial flag for one of their sons, who died in service overseas. They've got a couple more over there, too.

"We just want them home soon," the mother said, her voice almost breaking.

"I do, too," I told her.

July 4, the day to honor heroes. Some of them, as I've discovered, are in my neighborhood.

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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