Reader offers helpful hints
for paying your utility bill
To the editor:
Take it from a man that has spent 70 years trying to find easier ways to do things – there is a way that I have developed that can actually make it easier to pay your Maine Public Service electric bill. Easier, not easy! Who thought up this abomination? The Marquis de Sade? The Rubik’s cube dudes? Whoever it was, I’ll bet they were down in the Maine Public Service employees’ lounge for weeks after exchanging high fives and laughing uproariously at the thought of us seniors trying to get this paper strongbox open without tearing it to smithereens or being sent off to the giggling academy in strait jackets.
I used to dread the monthly arrival of that bill from hell and put off paying it for as long as possible. Steeling myself with a refreshing pitcher of margaritas, I would first lay out my tools: an ice scraper, an exacto knife, cherry pitter, a roll of duct tape and a ball-peen hammer. The outside flap will never come undone without tearing it in several places – hence the ice scraper and exacto knife. Then the perforation that you encounter is not deep enough so that it becomes a tattered mess that prevents you from folding flap “A” over flap “B” to seal the thing – provided, of course, that you’ve remembered to put the stub and check inside first. If not, this is where the duct tape comes in handy. The ball-peen hammer is for smashing the childproof Excedrin bottle open just in case. An Asian lady friend of mine who has a fifth degree black belt in origami couldn’t do this without my helpful hints.
First you get yourself a whistling teakettle and make yourself some poutine and get some Bailey’s Irish Cream (for the Irish coffee you can enjoy after the initial purpose of the teakettle has been served), which is to carefully steam the outside flap until a razor blade can be inserted and you can unglue the whole thing in one piece. You are now down to that perforated part that must be removed. Carefully deepen this perforation with your exacto knife and a straight edge and remove this in one piece.
After you have made sure to enclose your remittance stub along with your payment, it is time to moisten the flap that has the perimeter of a good-sized cigar box. Pavlov’s dogs could not generate enough saliva to do this no matter how many bells you rang – but I have a little secret. I have a 140-pound bloodhound/German shepherd mix (Lamard), with a tongue on him that would put Gene Simmons to shame. Remember the poutine? I slather the entire perimeter with gravy from my pre-prepared poutine and Lamard eagerly moistens the flap for final sealing. (One cannot help wondering how Harry Houdini would have dealt with this.) Lamard, of course, spends the next 15 minutes drinking out of the toilet in an effort to get the taste of the glue out of his mouth. Poor thing does a pretty good job of imitating a camel stocking up for a spice run across the Gobi desert.
Why don’t you just pay online, you may have asked? Hey, I can’t even program my Mr. Coffee and I still use a rotary phone and have an 8-track to play my Elvis albums on — so please don’t ask me to go online!
Portage
