1995dec23. Telegrams and Why, I Guess, They Suck.
[research: Todd Matthews & Jay R.]
I’ve recently taken a shine to a woman with whom I am acquainted. I have not told her this. As a novel way of broaching this topic with her (although we, meaning you, all know that she knows, because all women know before men because men just don’t know, and I kind of knew that she probably knew, but what we, meaning I, don’t know is if she’s, you know), I thought about sending her a telegram. Something like
DOMINIQUE STOP LOOK STOP A TELEGRAM STOP I REALLY DIG YOU STOP UHHHH YEAH STOP“Wouldn’t that be the bee’s knees?” I thought to myself. While explaining this with very little overt exertion of pressure to my crack research team (Homeslice Pop-Culture Investigations, Ltd), they were immediately on the case and on the phone with Western Union. WU has come a long way since the first telegraph transmission in 1794 (Paris, to Lille, France, a distance of 126 miles. One can imagine that telegrams of lesser distances were implemented, but they didn’t make any of the history books I have, and, once again, I do not hesitate to say that I can only do so much in a Missive, or, more succinctly, you get what you pay for). Here’s how a telegram used to work. You would go to a telegram place (say, Western Union), hand-deliver your message and the address of where the message was to be sent. Then they would get on their little telegraph machine, and tap your message in Morse code along with routing codes (one would imagine). The station nearest your destination address would eventually receive the message (“Sent to Chinese a potter’s wheel, good luck”) and send a cute lil’ Western Union courier (wearing one of those darling hats; of course, back in the early 1800’s, it may have been tri-cornered. I try not to think about such things) to hand-deliver the message to the address. It’s 1995 now. There are phones. There is Fed Ex. There is the Internet. Western Union now mainly functions as a money transfer service, but there are still telegram services. Oh my yes. There’s an “Opiniongram,” a “Mailgram,” and the standard “Telegram.”
An “Opiniongram” consists of 1-20 words that you feel you must send to an elected official. This service costs $9.95. Each additional 20 words tacks on $3.50. I believe this service is made available primarily for prisoners requesting pardons at the eleventh hour (“In my opinion, I think you should SAVE MY ASS from the gas chamber, a lethal injection, or the chair, whatever they've got cooked up for me, no pun intended” would cost you $13.45, for example. At this point, I would assume, money would be no object). Actually, as it turns out, our elected officials, in their infinite, free-franking privilege wisdom, have assigned different levels of importance not to the messages contained therein, but their mode of arrival. A telegram is the gold standard, a letter second-best; a phone call is considered to be 1/100th of a letter, and email, 1/1000th of a letter. Perhaps voting should work like this. For example, if you walk to the polling station, which is actually pretty easy, your vote counts as 1/1000th of a person. But say you rent a limosine and a trailing conga line ... your vote would really count! Once again, the opinions of the rich and stupid are valued over those of the masses.
A “Mailgram” is 1-50 words that you’d like to send to someone else through the United States Post Office, and costs $18.95. I’m sure all of us, at one time or another, have had the desire to write someone but regarded the execution thereof tiring and laborious. Now, you can just pick up the phone! I’m sure there’s an additional charge for more words, but the crack research team was interrupted by my comical phone book readings (one HILARIOUS example: “Hey! Here’s ‘Taxidermy'!”).
The hallowed, historic “Telegram” is 1-15 words that are delivered to your desired party via the telephone. This will set you back $16.95 (16-25 words $23.95). If you’d rather have it hand-delivered, that’s an extra $13.95. It will be delivered by a non-hatted third-party courier service (like those maniacal DHL boys, for instance). Well, doesn’t this just Suck. What a pathetic shell the Telegram has turned out to be in these modern times. Clinging to its last breath, the Telegram demands premium payment for the redundancy of its existence, and can’t even offer the novelty of a hatted messenger boy you can kick around if the news is bad.
In a way, I emulated the modern-day telegram delivery process with my crack research team, barking orders over the phone which were then relayed to the Western Union operator who was on another line. However, my crack research team refused to ask the operator about “Theragrams” or “Teddy Grahams.” Perhaps I don’t pay them enough.
If I ever got a telegram in the mail (or over the phone) from someone, the first thing I would think would be “neat!,” immediately followed by “what an idiot.” So I sent Dominique a Strip-O-Gram.