On Hold While Dinner Burns

Miss Crankypants is, at this very moment, on hold with the stupid medical insurance exchange in her state. She’s been on hold like this for about seven years. And no, her luck isn’t getting any better.
Is it any wonder she’s cranky? Like many Americans, she went for years without insurance. That’s the equivalent of running naked with bulls, hoping not to get gored in a most unpleasant place.
And now that we’re all kum-bay-ah on this doctor thing, we’re being treated to even more bureaucratic red tape than ever!
Take her word for it, this kind of waiting-on-hold-for-approximately-ever has music (or muzak) just as irritating as anywhere else.
If Miss CP ever hears Kenny G again, she’ll go all Manchurian Candidate on you so watch out.
Meanwhile, dinner is burning as the awful instrumentals play on.
It gets Miss Cranky thinking about Nero, who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned. Now nobody thinks Nero was a cuddly teddy bear, but maybe, just maybe it wasn’t Nero’s fault. He was stuck on hold, waiting to enroll in a Roman Medical Insurance Plan! 
He got so bored, he started fiddling to pass the time. And wouldn’t you know it? Dinner burns, igniting the whole dang town. Oops.
If Nero was as ticked as Miss Crankypants is this very minute, he no doubt heard the music hiccup about every twenty seconds. In the span of two seconds, hope blossomed and Nero thought he was FINALLY going to get through to a real person. But no.
It was only the dumb recorded voice saying Nero was the two-hundredth caller in line and meanwhile would he like to listen to Kenny G?
You can totally understand how Rome burned while Nero fiddled.
It was all the waiting on hold. If Miss Cranky EVER gets through to a real live person, she’s going to tell him exactly where they can shove Kenny. Dinner’s toast–literally. And oh by the way, got any of those Bronze Age Insurance Plans left?

About Linda S. Clare

I'm an author, speaker, writing coach and mentor. I teach both fiction and nonfiction writing at Lane Community College and in the doctoral program as expert writing advisor for George Fox University. I love helping writers improve their craft and I'm both an avid reader and writer of stories about those with wounded hearts.

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