I think Tom's right, maybe I should just bite the bullet and pay the extra money for touch tone service. I'm thinking it will probably be $10 or $12 a month more than I'm paying now but at least I can make an appointment to see my doctor. So I call the phone company. Wouldn't you know it, the first thing I hear is push 1 for this and push 2 for that and push 3 for something else. But at the end of all that when they ran out of buttons to push, this recorded voice says if you can't push any buttons wait and a service representative will speak to you. "Hal-a-lu-ya" Maybe there's a live person there after all. After waiting 16 minutes, I'm about to give up and hang up when all of a sudden I hear this voice saying "can I help you?"

I'm so wrapped up in the loud music and this voice saying every 15 seconds, "do not hang up, your call is very important to us. The next service representative that's free will answer your call." I wonder free from what. A trip to the bathroom, her coffee break, or maybe from the game of solitary she's playing on her computer. Anyway when this voice says "can I help you?" all I can think of to say is "are you a machine or a real person?" The voice assures me that she is a real person. By this time I've collected my wits and remember why I'm calling. I explained to her my problem and told her why I had called.

"How much will it cost me to change my service from rotary to touch tone," I ask. She said wait a minute and let her pull up my account on her computer. She said, "oh there you are Mr. Moore." "Yes ma'am I know where I am. I just want to know how much it will cost me." "No," she said, "I mean there you are in my computer. To change your service from phase to tone will cost you 18 cents a month more than you are paying now with a one time charge of $19 to change you over."

18 cents a month! Now I'm not usually too emotional but thinking about all the pain and suffering I've gone through because I couldn't push 1, 2, and 3, I broke down completely and started crying. The service rep misunderstood me completely. She told me to hold on for a minute and let her speak to her supervisor. When she came back on the line, she told me her supervisor had authorized her to drop the one time $19 charge. All it would cost would be 18 cents a month. I managed to get out a thank you between sobs and hung up.

The next time I talked to Tom, I mentioned I had to go to the bank the next day to renew a CD. Tom asked me what interest rate the bank was paying me. I told him I was drawing 4.65% interest on a 12 month CD. "Oh," he said, "is that all?" Well you don't have to hit me over the head with a 2 x 4. I knew that question meant something so I asked Tom what interest his CD's were drawing. Tom told me he didn't have his money in CD's. He had his money in mutual funds and some of them had paid him a rate of 32% over the last 12 months. I started crying again. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

Tom showed me how to invest in mutual funds and suggested some funds I might try. He told me these funds could go up or down. There was no guarantee that I wouldn't lose money instead of making money. Once again he got me to take one more step out of the dark ages.

The last time I talked to Tom, he said a word that almost made me faint. He said, "computer." When someone says computer to me, I throw up both hands and run backward. My typewriter is still a manual typewriter. The thought of jumping from a manual typewriter to a computer is mind boggling to me. It hasn't been long since I made the leap from a manual transmission to an automatic transmission in my pickup's.

Now Tom is trying to drag me from a manual typewriter to a computer. No way! But Tom is persistent. He keeps telling me all these things I can do with a computer, like keep a record of my household expenses. "But, Tom, I can do that with a pencil and a piece of paper," I say. He says, "You can keep a record of how much you spend on gasoline for your pickup." But I can do that with a pencil and a piece of paper. He says, "You can keep up with the kind of medicine you take and when you will need to get more. But I can do -- "yeah I know," he says, "you can do that with a pencil and a piece of paper. All right, how about this. You can play solitary on your computer. Can you do that with a pencil and a piece of paper?"

Well, he had me there, so I told him, "ok, I'll go buy a computer." One small step for Tom, one giant step for me. If Tom keeps on, by the year 2000, I might be out of the dark ages and into modern times. That is if the Y2K bug doesn't bite me first!