Anyone else feel like revenge was ruined by technology?
Sure, technology allows other things: stalking, international terrorist cell-formation, wide-scale rube-duping, and myriad schemes easy to monetize. No question.
But for good, old-fashioned revenge, technology really took the sport out of it. Plus, I think staring at our phones hampers our ability to be creative in that department.
No longer do we, say, wait for a train, look up at the newsstand, notice a farming magazine, buy one, and within a few stops realize the best way to address an abusive boss is to send 150 live chicks to his house anonymously, Cash On Delivery.
If you’re really lucky you’ll be working the shift when he gets the call from his furious wife a few days later telling him to get home because she opened the mystery box, and he keeps saying, “They’re what? 150 whats?” and then she screams “and now they’re everywhere and how do I get them back in the box nowwwww?”
Sure, you might notice the rest of the kitchen staff silently turn and look at you, but that’s not proof.
And because there’s no internet or Google, you’ll watch your boss tearing through the Yellow Pages looking for “Animal Control” or “Farm Sanctuary” or “Live Chick Drop-Off” until he finally calls his friend in upstate New York, slams down the phone and says he’ll be gone for the rest of the day.
Or let’s say a person has been mean to you in such a way that lessons need to be learned. (For those friends in the writing game, this is exactly why the passive tense was invented.)
Before caller ID and Venmo, one could call every pizza place in the delivery area, place an order at each one spaced, say, every half-hour all day and night, and have them delivered to that person’s house. COD, of course.
In a college town that’s a lot of pizza places, and without knowing which one is next there’s no way to cancel them. Such a shame.
The advent of caller ID is also to blame for the loss of one of the most enduring revenge tools, what…someone… called the “You Need Jesus” protocol.
Should a friend do something untoward, say not showing up as a buffer guest at a party, or refusing to make one brownies when one really needed them, just a few pieces of information were required.
With that friend’s phone number, address, or email—all of them if possible—a call to the Jehova’s Witnesses or Mormons would guarantee a good ten years of visits, phone calls, emails, and mailers with just a simple phrase.
“Hi, I’m ___. Tell me more.”
But the demise of COD is the biggest loss to the revenge business.
When faced with a cheating partner there are remedies as old as time, but few of them both legal and satisfying. One particularly sunny March afternoon such a happenstance occurred, coinciding with the two-timer’s birthday.
Adjacent to his workplace was a high-end florist, just the place to order a $385 bouquet to be delivered that day, with a lovely card wishing him the happiest of birthdays.
COD of course.
Morning Teaistisms
I’m not much of a fan of raspberry anything, not even the fruit, but it’s been a stressy week (hence the late post), and it’s also the last gasp of iced tea weather, so iced raspberry herbal tea it is.
It’s hitting nicely, gentle and not too floral. Raspberries, it turns out, go nicely with fond memories of revenge.
Heh. Before the internet, we had a phone number that was one number off from a pizza place. We got a lot of calls, which quickly ended with "I'm sorry" when we explained the misdial. One day a caller refused to believe it--called back over and over, threatening us with practicing discrimination (against what we couldn't figure out. He sounded ordinary white-bread.) Finally my brother answered the phone and simply took his order.
He didn't ever call back to complain he hadn't gotten his pizza. I presume when it didn't show up he finally looked at the number he was dialing.
Something technology hasn't ruined: I may or may not have mailed something back to an ex after rubbing it all over my cat. Did I mention he was allergic?