Don't Fear the Beeper

Thunk!

That was the sound of a long-awaited package hitting the concrete stoop of Ray Rosetti’s split-level house. He sprung out of his chair and dashed to the door, like a dog that had just heard its owner’s house key in the deadbolt. He flung open the door and eagerly snapped up a little cardboard box covered in tape.

“Thanks Jim!” he called out to the departing mailman as he closed the door and ran back inside. He eagerly placed the box on his kitchen table, crowded with papers, contracts, and print-outs, and carefully opened it with his Swiss Army Knife. He reached inside, and gingerly pulled out a small black plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, as if her were Indiana Jones grabbing the golden idol of the Hovitos. On one side of the box was a speaker, and on the top was a single small dial labelled “Volume”.

Raymond Francis Rossetti was a man of about a thousand ideas, each one just that little bit worse or more demented than the last. He was middle aged, with thinning black hair and a pockmarked face, but always immaculately dressed in a business suit, even if he had no plans to leave his house that particular day. After all, he was Ray Rossetti, business mogul in waiting, “The Wizard of Manalapatcong”. He saw himself as a character straight out of a Springsteen song, an underdog hero on a last-chance power drive to glory.

The reality of his situation was far less glamorous. So far in his lengthy “business career”, he had mostly succeeded in simply wasting a lot of his own time and other people’s money, as well as making himself a permanent enemy of the local volunteer fire department. For some reason, many of his business ideas failed in ways that involved uncontained fire at some point.

And now Ray Rossetti had just completed his latest business transaction.

The Wizard of Manalapatcong had bought a pager.

It made sense to him. As a man who had grown up in a world before everyone had a cellphone, he remembered that all of the serious businessmen (and the mafiosi who pretended to be serious businessmen) had had pagers. He was a serious businessman. Thus, he needed a pager.

Finding one had been a bit of a challenge. The clerk at the local BestBuy off of Route 1 had barely been able to stifle his laughter when Ray asked him about purchasing one. But eBay eventually came through, like it always did, and 4-6 weeks later, Ray Rossetti at last had his precious pager.

Eagerly, he set the pager on the table, and began to read from the enclosed instruction pamphlet. It was slow going, as this had clearly been machine translated into English from another language. Still, Ray was nothing if not persistent.

“To test pager functionality,” Ray read slowly from the instructions, “push down upon knob which controls volume and hold for 5 seconds. Test tone will promptly sound.”

Ray did as instructed. A few seconds later, an ear-splitting tone began to sound, sort of like a demented crossbreed of a fire alarm and a didgeridoo. Ray clapped his hands over his ears in shock, then, after a few seconds, looked back at the instructions to figure out how to stop the tone test.

No such thing was stated anywhere in the instructions.

“Alright,” Ray thought to himself, “it’s probably on an automatic timer. I’ll just leave it for a few minutes and it’ll stop on its own.”

So, Ray went about the rest of his day. First 5 minutes passed. Then 10. Then 20. Then an hour. The infernal tone still sounded.

Growing more irritated by the minute, Ray picked up the instruction packet again and glanced at the back.

“For customer service, please call 1-800-724-3777. Operators are present 24/7.”

Ray quickly snatched up his phone and called the number. The response he received consisted of static crackling, followed by an automated menu.

“For the reporting of problems with products, please press number 1.”, a pleasantly monotone mechanical voice said.

Ray continued. Eventually, after more static and clicking sounds, Ray finally heard from an actual person, speaking to him in rapid-fire Cantonese.

Ray Rossetti did not understand Cantonese. He hung up the phone with a look of utter defeat on his face.

“Alright, this is getting annoying. Think Ray, think. What to do with this damn thing?”

Eventually, Ray settled for the simplest option. He opened one of his kitchen drawers, the one everyone has that contains thumbtacks, pennies, business cards, leftover Chinese food sauce packets, dead batteries, and anything else you’d like to forget about. He placed the offending pager inside, then slammed it shut with a huff.

Finally, Ray Rossetti was free of the beeping of the hideous pager.

Until about 3:00 am, that is.

Ray woke from his favorite recurring dream, him ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, to the tell-tale fire alarm didgeridoo cry of the pager. Wondering if he was still dreaming, Ray, clad in a T-shirt, shorts, and a red bathrobe, groggily walked up the stairs from his bedroom to the kitchen, his faithful dog Rocky right behind him. The sound got louder and louder as he ascended the stairs. Ray opened the drawer, and almost dropped to the ground from the pain in his ears. Rocky yowled. Fleeing to his garage, Ray returned a few minutes later wearing earmuffs, which offered him some protection from the beeping of the hideous pager.

“The fucking thing, marone!”, Ray thought to himself. “Thing’s so busted it gets louder the longer it’s on!”

A few minutes later, Ray was headed out to his backyard, pager in one hand and shovel in the other. The burial went quickly, and Ray was finally free of the beeping of the hideous pager. Rocky looked like he had to relieve himself, so Ray left him outside, shut the door, and went back downstairs to his bed.

About 6:00 am, Ray was again awakened, this time by the sound of scratching at his back door. The sun was just beginning to rise, and Rocky was eager to come in for his morning feeding. Still somewhat groggy from his late-night burying expedition, Ray once again headed up the stairs.

“Alright Rocky, I’m coming, I’m coming.”, Ray mumbled as he took his keys off of the wall-mounted hook they hung on and opened the door. Rocky came bounding in, his paws caked with dirt and something in his mouth.

“Rocky!”, Ray scolded, “what did I tell you about digging up the yard!”

Rocky whimpered, lay down on the kitchen floor, and dropped whatever he was holding in his mouth.

“What have you got there boy?”, Ray asked as he walked over to where Rocky lay and picked up the object formerly in his mouth.

It was the pager, now covered in dirt and bite marks, but blessedly silent.

“Huh. Guess we finally figured out how to kill this damn…”

The hideous pager began to beep again, the sound starting low but rapidly growing louder and louder. Rocky fled in fear to another room, tracking dirt everywhere he went.

Ray’s face twisted into a combination of rage, frustration, and demented glee. Silently, he headed once more for the garage.

A few minutes later, Ray Rossetti, earmuffs back on, crouched in his backyard, furiously duct-tapping the hideous pager to the side of a large firework rocket. Selling fireworks door-to-door was stupid, they said. A waste of time, they said. Probably illegal, they said. Well, no better way to get his new business off the ground, Ray thought, then by using it to destroy the pager he had originally bought to help him run it.

“Hasta la vista, baby!”, Ray taunted the pager as he struck a match and lit the fuse on the rocket. A few seconds later, the rocket hissed and roared and then flew straight up into the sky, exploding with a staccato bang. Ray danced giddily around his backyard in bare feet, whooping and yelling like a movie cowboy.

Suddenly, something small fell from the sky and bounced off of Ray’s head and onto the ground. Stunned out of his reverie, he bent down to pick it up. It was small and charred, little more than a piece of silvery metal with a few wires hanging off it.

And then Ray Rosetti once again heard the beeping of the hideous pager.