#emergencies
I wouldn’t call what we do ‘blogging,’ would you?
I’m somewhat conversant with blogging and it would be like:
‘December 14th, I realized I was out of dental floss, so I called 112 (France’s 911) and they yelled at me.”
A poet might say:
The morning was pale and judgmental, the light didn’t illuminate, as much as accuse me of oversleeping. I’d just spit-out the last of my bubblegum toothpaste, when I tugged the dental floss only to be rewarded with a two-inch fragment.
The sink gurgled like a drowning swimmer as I rummaged through the medicine cabinet and then the linen closet - where we store spare soaps, shampoos, mouthwashes and the other detritus of modern hygiene -
but no floss.
I’d started the shower minutes ago, expecting a quick entry and now the bathroom had become sauna-like. French bathrooms have these box-like, ‘on demand’ water heaters, like 2 gallon coffee percolators, that dispense hot-as--holy-hell water, the mist of which, falling on the chilled, white, underfoot tiles, created a ceramic slippery-slide. I searched Peter and my travel toiletry bags, but alas and again, no floss.
The ticking clock, that merciless, bureaucratic tool, mocked the undoing of my morning schedule.
In a moment of clarity, born of despair, I picked up my iPhone and demanded “Siri, call One-one-two!”
The French telephone system returns a higher-pitched, single-tone ring with longer pauses in between.
Three rings later I got an answer, “This is an emergency.” I announced (‘C'est une urgence’).
“What is the nature of your emergency,” a calm, dispassionate A.I.-voice asked.
“I’ve run out of floss.” I blurted.
There was a long pause where I could almost hear the A.I. dispatcher glitching.
“Mademoiselle,” it finally said, “calling 112 is not a joke.”
“Neither is plaque!” I replied - thinking of how proud my dental hygienist would be of me.
“Yet here we are,” I added, before the line went dead.
.
.
A song for this:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_21.mp3
Dec 16, 2025
Dec 16, 2025 at 10:15 PM UTC
I'm choking on half-hearted efforts to move on and heavy nolstsgia.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 12:32 PM UTC