Just Ask

     Shocked to find in today’s mail a bill from the cardiologist's office  for $50, listed as  “No show appointment fee...requires 24 hour notice for cancellation.”  I wasn't too shocked, though, to notice that “24 hour”  should have been hyphenated.
     Yes,  I simply forgot.  Yes, it’s written on the calendar, but lately it can be hard to remember what day it is.  Yes, I must have wasted the doctor’s valuable time, though when I finally did see him, a few days after that, it was for all of one-and-a-half minutes.  (Should that have been hyphenated?  I'm not sure.  It'd be safer to make it two minutes.  But I digress.)
     Yes, I approve of  moving every bit of the job down to the least paid person who can handle it, and I have no quarrel with the nice physician’s assistant.  Yes, things are just fine, come back in six months. 

     But if I had a $50 charge every time I forgot something these days, I’d be bankrupt before the end of the month. 
     So I started to write a check, muttering to the cleaning lady, who happened to run the vacuum cleaner into the office right then.  “Oh, that happened to me,” she said happily.  “I just called them up and asked were they trying to teach me a lesson or what, and they dropped the fee.”
     So wotthehell, I called Them up myself.  After all, now that I’m old I feel Entitled.  To everything.
     “If you think you have a way to make me remember things,” I said on the phone, “you could make a fortune.”  And she, whoever she was, just laughed and said “I’ll take it off your record.”  She didn’t sound a bit surprised. I got the impression she expects the call.  I guess it's part of the ritual.
     I mention this in case it is useful to you some day.  For that matter, here’s another one:  I was unhappy – horrified may be the better word – with this month's  Time Warner cable bill.  Of those hundreds of channels I watch about a dozen -- news, public television, and any movie with no commercials.  So why didn't I think of calling them before?  Now I still have all those useless channels but my monthly charge has somehow been cut in half.  “This month’s already been paid,” said the nice gentleman whose goal in life is to keep callers from transferring to Dish TV.  “But I’ll give you a credit; it’ll show up on your bill."
     I'll check it out.  And I'll get back to the doctor in six months.
     If I remember.