I had a little fun today. I was receiving those lovely, if unrequested, interruptions in my afternoon known patiently as telemarketers. There are less patient descriptions of such phone calls which cannot in good conscience be used in church. In all, I only really received two calls. The first I treated as a minor annoyance, but when the second came, from a new number, and the voice was next to identical to the one before, I decided a little social experiment might be in order.
I had on hand a copy of Leaves of Grass. I bid the telemarketer hold a moment. Flipping through the unimportant pages of professorial essays which seem to cling onto good books like mollusks on a proud naval vessel, I came to the opening lines of Walt Whitman’s work. I began to read, Oh, not how any schoolboy might read, but with all the overdramatic, scene chewing flare I could muster. Nicholas Cage would be proud of me. I spoke with as deep a passion as I could manufacture.
Suffering no interruptions, I read to this telemarketer. Around the third page he began to make little complaining noises, saying, “Sir” at inconvenient intervals. I carried on despite these rude attempts to break my rhythm.
Shortly after all this, the stranger hung up. He seemed not to be in a mood for poetry.
Tale Told 