Tireless Termites

Termite: Any of various pale-colored social insects that are very destructive . .

I took a call from EMC recently. Most of my friends and I have a basic understanding about the phone. If I get voice mail when I call someone I leave a message and a schtickle of information. Most of the time I can say that everything is fine and I'm merely checking in. I touch base with a lot of people to make sure that my awareness of my surroundings is not completely insane. This is not unusual. I'm always checking: "Is this insane? Is this weird? Should I stop doing this?" I have no idea most of the time.

On occasion, the Termites of Fear are ceaselessly devouring the foundations of my sanity and I need to talk to someone sooner rather than later. Being an adult, sort of, I practice adult phone etiquette and indicate this in my message. At that point I expect a phone call as soon as it's convenient for the other person, but I don't sit around and wait: I move down my long list to the next guy. My tolerance for pain is much, much lower than it used to be. And I don't think any of us have the market cornered on right behavior.

EMC was burned up. I could tell right away because normally his cadence is nice and deliberate. He was talking a mile a minute. I don't think that I passed along any profound information; from what I could tell, assuming he wasn't lying too much and exaggerating too ridiculously, he was behaving in a perfectly appropriate manner and responding with hale and good cheer to some stressful information. Mostly I listened, which I've learned is all I really want from my friends most of the time, and dispensed some hackneyed and fairly obvious advice: You're upset so take a deep breath and calm down before you do anything. This isn't philosophical advice worthy of Gandhi or Plato, for god's sake. I'd expect to hear "Look before you leap" from philosophers like Foghorn Leghorn or Bullwinkle.

Good old Foghorn. He always knew what to say.