Sunday, April 24, 2016

T is for Traveling Entertainment

As a participant in the A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be making my way through the alphabet all month.



Before moving to Indianapolis, I had a job as a courier (which is just a fancy word for deliveryman). I mostly delivered office supplies, but I had a few contracts that involved me delivering blood for the Red Cross and the occasional biopsy sample for a medical firm. The office supplies were always delivered around town, but when I had medical deliveries, I was on the road for a while.

He quit talking to me for some reason.
I usually had to deliver to St. Louis (90 miles from my house), but I didn't always make the pick-up in my hometown. Sometimes, I had to drive for a few hours to even get the product. These trips varied from 180 to 450 miles round trip. In addition to these trips being long, they were always done in the evenings after I had already gotten off my regular route. For this reason, I was usually tired before I even started the trip and often needed help staying awake. And as much as I love caffeine and its glorious side effects, there is only so much coffee and Mt Dew a person can drink before it begins to revolt against your system.

Apparently, it is illegal to talk on the phone while driving and my Candy Crush scores tend to suffer when I can't give the game my full attention, so I am always looking for ways to pass the time. On road trips, this is not an issue because I can pull over at any time to look at anything that catches my eye. When making deliveries, I was on a schedule. It didn't take me long to learn that texting passed the time fairly quickly.

NOTE: My phone is voice activated and the texts are read to me over my stereo system. So, I am not looking at my phone. My eyes are on the road. Sometimes I drive with my feet to entertain myself, but I am always looking at the road.

Recently, while going through my phone, I found one of those texting conversations. It was getting late and I needed someone to talk to. So, I shot a text to my brother Kyle. It turned out he was on the road also and even had other people in the vehicle with him, but I was not deterred. Despite the fact that he didn't stay in the conversation for very long, I tried to keep it going since I had an audience.

That conversation is included on the right.
→→→→
I didn't feel bad about it. Kyle has a long history of trying to tie up people's time on the phone. Back in the 80's when answering machines still used miniature cassette tapes, Kyle would talk long enough to use up the entire tape. If the machine had a 30-second cutoff, he would just keep calling back until it was used up. He still does this today, but in today's digital world, there is an almost unlimited amount of time. I have received many voice mail messages from him that lasted longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended versions).

Now that I don't have that job anymore, I have to find new ways to be annoying. 

Kyle's actually pretty good
at being annoying himself.

14 comments:

  1. LOL! My teens love to do silly text marathons like this. That's what brother's are for, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. With cruise control, I would occasionally sit cross-legged while driving on the interstate.
    I miss my cruise control.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My last car didn't have it, but it's back now.

      Delete
  3. Good idea to do this texting while you are doing your traveling; especially voice activated. I had to laugh about your brother though calling back phones time after time after time to fill up all the message time :)

    enjoy the rest of the challenge!

    betty
    http://viewsfrombenches.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He has always taken pride in being the annoying one.

      Delete
  4. FINALLY! I get a story dedicated to me. It took long enough. You've mentioned "your brother" or "brothers" a few times. I got mentioned by name once. I can't believe it took to "T" to get an entire blog dedication. You should write about me more. You know I would write about you, if I knew how to write. Writing has never been my thing. I'm more of a talker. Talking, I can do. I can also build things. I built a garage today. I also have a few inventions in the works
    Getting ready to start on the prototype. You've never been good at building things. Although you can talk. I once talked down a charging rino. Did I spell that right. Rino, it didn't come up in my spell check. Sometimes spellings of words just escape me. Then I see it and I'm like "duh". You know what else escapes me. My raccoons. I caught a couple of baby raccoons that were under one of my houses... they escaped. They were cute. One of them was really mean, or acted mean. And another one was real timid. And the other one wanted all the attention. Reminded me of us 3. Because we had raccoons when we were younger. Spell check just changed younger to yunger. Is that even a word. Sounds German. Why does my spell check change things to words that don't even exist. Although like, I could be seeing something completely different then what is there. You know, because I have an old prescription. We're not getting good any yunger you know. Which one of us, you think, will be the fist to wear bifocals. And me having to wear them in Jr. High doesn't count. Speaking of old. I'm tired. I think it is time to flush the toilet and go to bed. My butt is already asleep.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's too much work for the toilet. I usually only sleep in there.

      Delete
  5. That's cool.
    And texting on move... its common.i manage quite interestingly.

    Here are my takes with T
    Teej (Festivals of India)
    http://facetsofadishortstories.blogspot.in/2016/04/t-for-teej.html
    Tears Deceitful (Poetry)
    http://facetsofadienglish.blogspot.in/2016/04/t-for-tears-deceitful.html
    Do spare some time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Been a while since Ive gotten to read your posts, but now that Im back for a bit I can get my fill. Lol and by the way, I still take full credit for your blogging life. You're welcome ;D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll happily give you the credit. It was all your idea and I thank you for it.

      Delete
  7. I took a Badminton class in college. I sucked. The only one I could beat was the fat chick in a wheelchair.
    Glad she spotted me ten points.
    Because I won by two.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sounds like you are almost as athletically skilled as me.

      Delete

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT! I wrote this for you.

If you would like to leave a comment, but do not have a Google account just click on the COMMENT AS: dropdown box and choose Name/URL or Anonymous.

But if you choose Anonymous, please let me know who you are unless you really do not want me to know.