Telephone Bear

Doesn't anyone answer the phone any more?

He answered that phone and took down orders for most of his 60 years. Born to a single Mama bear that got nailed by a bunch of horney boybears every spring and was pregnant by summer and feeling fat again. And the fathers? They’re hanging around taking naps and letting tourists take private photos of them shitting in the woods for the price of a peanut-butter cup. They say they can break the cycle, but then they bring some tourist back in the woods to watch them shit again. It’s degrading. The only animal known to develop self confidence and swagger from showing others where and what they shit is Tracy. The only one. Everyone else just feels terrible afterwards.

And what’s the alternative? What kind of future does a Momma Bear see for her cubs? Getting shot in the butt, that’s what. They’re giving people with guns a piece of paper that says they paid 20 bucks and have every right to shoot you right in the ass and don’t even have to say why. WTF.

You’d think the bears would maybe carve out a little time during their big annual picnic in the woods and develop plans for biting off the heads of human children, thereby sending a strong and unified message that they can shove their license up their ass and that bears were ready to reopen the whole question of whether bears shit in the woods by prohibiting photos, going so far as suggesting they might start collecting cell phones and uploading photos of their women dry humping bear rugs.

But everybody knows every bear bears the burden of a powerful weakness. Bears can’t hold their donuts. A bear will draw you a detailed map showing the best route to his Cousin's den for a dozen day-old Kristy Creams. Give a bear a six pack of jelly donuts and he’ll rip apart the honeycomb his neighbor carefully saved for a ticket to Yellowstone to join that gang of bears that had learned how to get in the glove compartment of a parked car in less time than it took to take a shit. -widely accepted by bears as the standard unit for measuring time. (They have no standard for measuring distance and no idea that when a human says, “he’s about a football field away” they’re talking about them. Bears are going to slap their foreheads like dumb Italians when they finally realize they need to duck whenever they hear a number followed by the words “football field”.

Anyway, no Mama Bear wants to bear the pain of her beautiful boy getting shot in the butt. Forget about the father. He’s a run-around and no good with the boy anyway. So maybe she sees her son answering a phone and taking orders and she’s the success of survival.

Maybe we can also see her son answering the phone and smile, remembering those wild times when we answered the phone too, not for survival, but with a joy for living. And then maybe we’ll stop the lie, telling ourselves that we can hear a person’s ‘voice’ in their text messages, or that we didn’t see their call, when we both know that our phone is right there in our lying fucking fingers.

Fight phone fear before it becomes a feature of our future! Tear down the tyranny of texting! Yes, I remain fond of phoning, and don’t mind fingering the phonies who claim phone phobia.

I’m fond of our wild old days of chatting with our mouths. In person if possible, but that wasn’t always possible. Besides, familiarity can breed contempt towards a small percentage of people, myself included. But all of us knew how to entertain and yes, even inform one another with the authentic sounds made by our mouth parts.

But this texting thing, where you use your finger to tap out words to be sent out to tap on a loved-one’s foreheads….meh.

Talking together was like being in our own imaginary John Gotti Social Club where we recharged and regrouped and went our ways, hopefully without getting shot in the foot by Joe Pesce - or anyone else for that matter.

We’d hang up when we damn well pleased. . The silence standing in tribute to our awesome power to transmit and receive whatever half-truths, accusations, and insults we care to share.

Again, Breathe. Our minds' eyes fly forward and become one, riding the power lines at full speed, one foot on positive, the other, ground. The circuit is complete and our ideas and our art, energy, and our juicy but rugged good looks all swirl together into a bad tasting but nourishing gruel that fuels our dreams for a better world.

With all the squawking and gullet flapping behind us, we’d each go our separate ways.