Regret

I've been spending a great deal of time outraged lately. Okay, not really emotionally outraged, but irked and annoyed as maybe only a Chicagoan can be by the build up of many, many things that have the power to irk and annoy even a reasonable person (we can leave whether or not I count among the "reasonable" up for debate). This latest burst of outrage began with the Enterprise Rent-A-Car disaster that left me without a rental car at 7 pm on the Friday I was to drive to Minneapolis. (I might mention I had reserved the car for 11 am and was denied a car at three different offices. Outrageous!) I have written a letter to the CEO of Enterprise and will be sending it off tomorrow. I consider it the proper use of democracy and capitalism and the US Mail to make my outrage known in the optimistic spirit that Enterprise will see the error of its ways and employ my clearly laid out 8 point solution to becoming a better company. I make some nice points about the importance of transportation in today's society and trust and even throw in that I needed the car in order to stand by a "graveside with a grieving family." If you ever need an outraged letter written, let me know; turns out I've got some skills. And, all satire aside, in this case I do actually think a letter is warranted.

But the letter I sent last night, I regret.

For those of you not in the Chicago area, it will be helpful to know that we had terrible storms last night. Hail, winds in excess of 70 MPH and tornadoes were predicted. In fact, a tornado was spotted on the ground and our watch became a warning and my area was listed in the line of that particular storm. So when the late afternoon sky became pitch dark and the sirens went off, I gathered up the cat and headed to the basement. One thing I have not located since the move (yeah, two years ago -- so, I still have unpacked boxes, okay?) is my weather radio. It's a lovely piece of equipment; battery powered and able to pick up AM, FM, and NOAA weather radio. It has been my trusty companion through many a storm. I felt its absence last night. Stuck in my spidery basement, with only the cat for company (who kept meowing at me to let her out and finally took to swatting at my arm), I was looking out my many windows (how is a basement even SAFE with so many windows??) at the green-ing sky, listening to the sirens and searching the internet desperately for information on the situation. I finally remembered my iPod, and tuned to my trusty news source -- NPR. Who was, at the moment a tornado was descending upon my home (okay, no, there actually was not a tornado; but this was my state of mind) airing the pledge drive. The PLEDGE DRIVE. Outrage. I know they need to do pledge drives, but it couldn't have waited 10 minutes for the worst of the storm to pass? People were pulled over in their cars along the expressway at rush hour, folks were in office buildings that had lost windows in the last big storm, and they are doing the pledge drive. What's worse; they are joking about the weather being a "sign" to give to Chicago Public Radio. The two announcers (who were clearly flirting with each other, btw, outrageous) were joking, "you're pulled over in the storm, there's nothing else to do, why not call...." So I did. I called the studios of Chicago Public Radio and left an OUTRAGED message telling them how inappropriate this choice was; that they could just cancel my pledge. When the storm broke, I got on my computer and wrote the same message. It was the culmination of my fear, my anxiety, my inability to get what I needed at that moment, feeling out of control and that slowly accumulating frustration that everything has to be so HARD...and when NPR lets you down, you know you've hit bottom.

Today I got an email from Chicago Public Radio member services. They apologized. And canceled my pledge as I requested. My outrage has become regret and embarrassment. I cannot imagine not being an NPR supporter. I wrote in my email that I would move my pledge to Minnesota Public Radio and I may yet. But not to support my local NPR station? That just makes me a little less, well, me. The good parts of me, I mean. Not the outraged letter writing, phone message leaving, pledge canceling parts.

I wonder how long I will need to wait before I can slink back into the legion of WBEZ supporters. Before I can reclaim my better self. Hey, I wonder if I could time it so that this time I can pledge and get yet another NPR mug. Then again, I wonder if instead I should send in my renewed pledge with a mea culpa.

Until that happens, I hope the New York Times doesn't do anything to outrage me; I really can't start reading the Tribune.