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[True - mostly]

I received a fax this morning from Congressman Tom Reynolds inviting me to "represent the state of Washington" on the Presidential Business Council. This is certainly an honor, even though there must be thousands of such representatives already from my state.

I should explain a few things. I am a retired businessman. I have been using the free time as a retired person to pursue an avocation of teaching people to fly, a job that pays somewhat less than a burger flipper but, since I have few financial worries, I find to be very satisfying. Yesterday was not atypical. My first lesson was scheduled for eight in the morning and I did not finish the last, a night flight for a private pilot student, until after eleven at night. This is a very long work day, but as I said, it beats sitting at home watching television.

Nevertheless, I did not get home and to bed until after midnight.

We have a small home office. Our fax line is the same as our regular phone line. Thus we were very alarmed when the phone suddenly rang at three in the morning! Could a fire have broken out at our business? Was a close family member injured or dying? What emergency could prompt a phone call at that time of the morning? What a relief when we discovered that it was only Mr. Reynolds' fax!

We thought perhaps if we ignored it that the problem would just go away. But five minutes later the fax machine made another attempt. My wife leapt out of bed and dashed to the office to turn on the fax machine, tripping over the phone cord in the process and causing a lamp to crash to the floor. Unfortunately, the fax machine chose that very moment to run out of toner. The relentless fax machine would beep endlessly until the toner was replaced and the infernal fax was finally delivered.

Jane flipped on the office light only to have the bulb go out in a final blaze of glory. Still, she was able to find the toner and somehow managed to load it into the fax machine, cutting herself only mildly in her haste in the dim light.

Of course, all this activity woke up the dog, who demanded to be let out immediately. Normally we take the dog out on a leash, but she stays pretty close to us and Jane figured she could just go out and come right back in. The unfortunate dog had other ideas, though, and went haring off after one of the local raccoons.

We live in a wooded area on a small lake, so we could not see where the dog was. So here we were, wandering around in our pajamas in the woods in the dark, waving flashlights and calling the dog.

This woke up our next door neighbor who came out on his deck and called over to ask us what the trouble was. Unfortunately he is a little hard of hearing, so when we said something about Tom Reynolds' flyer he thought we said something about a fire. He went in and called the fire department!

We still had not found our dog when four fire trucks came rolling up in front of the house, lights flashing. Now the whole neighborhood was awake and we had dozens of people, all in their pajamas, wandering around in the woods in the dark, waving flashlights and wondering what was going on.

It is now eight in the morning, time for all of us to go to work and we are just now all getting back inside to go to bed, except that Jane tripped over the phone line again.

It seems that some of my neighbors do not think Mr. Reynolds' invitation was as great an honor as I thought it was. Out of deference to their feelings, I must respectfully decline the offer and ask that my phone number be removed from your fax list.

Very truly yours,

Christopher Campbell

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