Constituent telephone calls are a gold-mine of cultural artifacts. During my years of answering constituent inquiries, I remember many conversations, lengthy and short, that brought little nuggets of America into my conciousness: A tiny, old lady voice from the Deep South inquiring as to the origins of daylight savings time ("It deprives us of two of the most beautiful hours of the day; it confuses the school children and farm animals. Why, why do we have it?"), the home-bound momma's boy who would call regularly and on the sly to opine at length about whatever had popped into his head until his mother, concerned about the long distance charges, discovered him and he beat a hasty retreat from the conversation ("Har-old! Are you on that damn phone again?" "Oh, gotta go, bye!") and the deeply schizophrenic young man who would call from a pay phone somewhere in Santa Monica to complain weekly, at times just to the voicemail system, about the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Stupidstarwars,thatsthestupidestdamnthing i'veeverheardof...)
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Constituent telephone calls are a gold-mine of cultural artifacts. During my years of answering constituent inquiries, I remember many conversations, lengthy and short, that brought little nuggets of America into my conciousness: A tiny, old lady voice from the Deep South inquiring as to the origins of daylight savings time ("It deprives us of two of the most beautiful hours of the day; it confuses the school children and farm animals. Why, why do we have it?"), the home-bound momma's boy who would call regularly and on the sly to opine at length about whatever had popped into his head until his mother, concerned about the long distance charges, discovered him and he beat a hasty retreat from the conversation ("Har-old! Are you on that damn phone again?" "Oh, gotta go, bye!") and the deeply schizophrenic young man who would call from a pay phone somewhere in Santa Monica to complain weekly, at times just to the voicemail system, about the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Stupidstarwars,thatsthestupidestdamnthing
i'veeverheardof...)
Ah, those were the days.
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