More Important Than Human Life

I reached a big milestone when I was two months into my Information Technology career.  My employer, a bank, issued me a beeper.

Only certain types of people carried beepers, mainly physicians and drug dealers.  I had joined their elite ranks.

I wore my beeper proudly.  I was an honor to be considered competent enough to fix the bank’s production problems at night on my own.

People would spot my beeper and ask me if I was a doctor.  My response: “No, I am not a doctor. I deal with something more important than human life.”  Most people then figured out that I must deal with money.

I carried a beeper for many years. To my disappointment, not once did someone spot my beeper and ask me if I was a drug dealer.

With a beeper on my belt, I had to make decisions about my social life.  

It was a crap shoot.  If I went out to a movie, and my beeper went off, I would miss a big chunk of the movie while I responded to a production problem.  However, if I stayed home out of fear that my beeper would go off in the middle of a movie, I would never get to see a movie.

Once my beeper went off during a party right when we finished singing “Happy Birthday to You” and the cake was about to be cut. I had to leave the party, and I still feel deprived that I never got any birthday cake. That was thirty-three years ago.

Usually there is a primary beeper and a backup beeper.

One night, when I was on backup, my beeper went off at 4 AM. The woman on primary needed help figuring out a problem.  Since she lived two miles from my home, I drove over to her house so we could look at the problem together.

She greeted me at the door wearing her bathrobe and fuzzy pink bunny slippers. We sat at her home computer in the dining room. We had the problem fixed in an hour --- but not before her husband woke up and groggily looked into the room.

Nowadays, my current employer does not make us carry beepers.  Production problems that occur at night are fixed the following morning.

So, never again will I be interrupted in the middle of a movie.  Never again will I miss out on birthday cake.

However, never again will I get to see the expression on a drowsy husband’s face when he peeks in his dining room at five in the morning and sees a strange man talking to his wife who is wearing her bathrobe and fuzzy pink bunny slippers.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com