Am I an Idiot?

I apologize for being away from my Substack for this extended period. I’ve been taking care of personal pressing urgencies, let’s just say the main issue being having hot water to take a shower. My adversary, Chesapeake Utilities. The company name gives grave insult to its source, the Native American Chesepian (Chesapian or Chesapeake) people.

I took a bracing, cold-water shower today. Not my choice. I don’t have hot water to allow me to indulge in such luxuries. How lucky am I that the outside temperature today is 101℉. Stepping into the shower was like stepping into the cold ocean on a hot sunny day minus being bowled over by a swelling, icy wave. Once I got used to it, though, it felt OK and I emerged refreshed.

Chesapeake, our natural gas utility, a monopoly franchised by our town, disconnected my gas service three days ago. After seven or eight phone calls to the company and either not receiving an answer or being told they can’t help me that it’s all my fault, I finally reached a compassionate man who told me they had disconnected my service by mistake and he scheduled a technician who came out and reconnected my service. But the technician failed to press the right setting on the heater to give me hot water.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have phoned the company since then, often being cut off once they put me on hold to connect me with the right department. No matter what department, and I didn’t know they had so many, they tell me I must get a contractor to come out and fix my heater. There’s nothing wrong with my heater. It worked beautifully until the gas company disconnected my service. To which department at the gas company, I wonder, do I tell the contractor to send their bill for coming out and pressing a button? If I knew which button to press, I’d do it myself. Plus my cellar’s really creepy. I’ve come up against a wall.

This story tells only the fallout. Initially, the gas company didn’t send bills to their customers for two months. It was winter, so the rates would accelerate and their excuse for not sending bills was that, well, it snowed. Consequently, everybody owed over $1,000. That was the first bill’s amount. Two days later, they sent out another bill totaling at least another $200 per customer. When they disconnected service for nonpayment of bills they hadn’t sent out, they charged a $60 reconnect fee. Unless you requested same day reconnect and then the fee was $150. Oh, and you could only pay, at least over the phone — they have shuttered their local brick and mortar office — with Mastercard or Visa. I wanted to pay from my bank account, but the bank has issued me only a Discover card. Chesapeake Utilities has come up with every way they can think of, and in this case I am glad they are so dumb, for it would be worse, to hinder payment. I researched potential assistance, made phone calls, talked it up among friends. Luckily and with a little help, I’ve caught up with my payments.

Speaking of oceans, I took a break to catch up on the news and see what other people in the world are doing. I came upon this L.A. Times 2023 travel — “The Wild” — piece all about Manhattan Beach1 and what to do there. Manhattan Beach, California, has become uber-gentrified. When I lived in the Los Angeles County beach cities more than 30 years ago, Manhattan Beach was a sandy beach town. Those were the days, mi amigo. Nevertheless, taking a mini virtual vacation, reading about the city, almost smelling the aromas of cooking food from all the restaurants I passed in my reading, feeling the refreshing sea breezes, inhaling the salt air blowing off the foamy tops of the breakers, delivered me momentarily from lunacy.

Buy me a margarita.

Returning from a wander into a life that now seems like a dream, my story at the outset of this piece is not all. This same week, not having gas to cook food, I ordered delivery. The delivery outfit’s website wouldn’t take my payment, from any source, and they couldn’t figure out how to correct that. So I ordered from a different service and that cost me $5 more. To keep from slipping into insanity, I thought I’d spend the evening watching an Amazon video. The video wouldn’t play. Just a spinning circle, two nights running. I phoned my credit card bank to see if a payment had posted. I could not get through to speak to a person; I muddled through one menu maze after another. I think there was something else, but I don’t recall. It’s hard to keep track.

Am I an idiot? “What’s the matter with me?” I said to my friend R over the phone. “What am I doing wrong?” I said it to another friend, too. Both answered the same thing: It’s the way of the world today. I am not an idiot. Not in the common sense of the word. They are lunatics.

Others are writing about the way of the world today. Some, in one way or another, have warned, as early as the 1980s, probably before, of its coming — Umberto Eco, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Geoffrey Hinton (godfather of the digital age), Pope Leo XIV.

But L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, The Soloist, says it best. Read it. I think you will relate.

I got a special audio book deal on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1868-1869). People actually sit on the train or in rooms and talk to one another, face-to-face. They examine each others’ faces for telling characteristics. They discuss day-to-day social issues with one another, thoughtfully and in a straightforward manner, respectfully. It’s amazing. Totally amazing.

~Samantha

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