On Being the Little Fat Boy That Nobody Loved, Part 1

How I thought of myself through high school

Well, I had this post all written, but technology failed me and I am writing it all over again. Maybe it will go faster the second time. The title of this post is a reference to the movie One Crazy Summer starring John Cusak, Demi Moore, Bobcat Goldthwait, Curtis Armstrong (that would be Booger from Revenge of the Nerds or Ms. DiPesto's love interest on Moonlighting) and many other actors you may or may not have heard of. The guy who wrote/directed it is the same guy who did Better Off Dead. These are both wonderful examples of stupid 1980's comedies and I highly recommend them to anyone who hasn't seen them! "Two dollars!"

I am not going to go too much into the plot of One Crazy Summer, but there is a scene I love where Bobcat's character is trying to cheer up Booger's (sorry, he will always be Booger to me). It goes something like this....

Bobcat: "Let me tell you the story of the little fat boy that nobody loved. Everyone used to make fun of him and say he talked funny and he had a twin brother and they said he didn't look like him, but he wanted too."

Booger: "Egg, were you that little boy?"

Bobcat: "No, no, but I used to grab him and hit him and say 'Why are you so fat? Why are you so fat?'"

This is not a perfect transcript but I will post a link to the scene.

I used to do a poor Bobcat impression and would rattle off these lines to get a laugh from my peers in high school. I would often project myself as being the little fat boy that nobody loved, and as I said, I would get a laugh. The sad thing was though, I actually felt that way about myself--not the whole twin thing or the talking funny part, but the fat thing for sure.

Me in Kindergarten (Skinny)

I really don't know when my negative self image began. When I was in Kindergarten I was skinny, and I even remember asking a girl to be my girlfriend. She said no, but I remember not really caring. I was too young to even know what a "girlfriend" was. As I worked my way up the classes I started to swell up. (I was never Fat Albert fat, more John Belushi fat.) I am not sure when I was officially fat, or even remember when I became overweight, but it happened. To be honest with you, I really didn't care that much about it in the lower grades. It seems that as my interest in girls increased, so did my awareness of all my flaws. Coincidence perhaps? Doubtful!

I think my negative self awareness really started around 5th - 6th grade. Being overweight was just one of my "problems." First off, I was a nerd. This was back in the 80's when being a nerd was not as acceptable as it seems now. I had always loved sci-fi and fantasy books and was just starting to learn about a game called Dungeons and Dragons. These were things I loved, yet in junior high and beyond I felt the need to hide my interests. I did not want people to think I was a nerd (and by people, I primarily meant girls).

Another "problem" I had at the time was that I was very immature and naive for my age. I was immature in that I still liked action figures and toys that I was probably too old for. My parents did not have a ton of money so I always brown-bagged my lunch. I can remember that I really wanted a lunch box and asked my parents for one for several years. One year, they decided to buy me one. It was an NFL lunchbox--metal, like they should be, with all of the teams' helmets on it. AFC on one side, NFC on the other. I thought it was the best, and proudly carried it to school. One of the first times I brought, it a girl came up to me and said, "Aren't you too old to have a lunch box?" I was crushed. I don't think I brought my lunch box ever again. I was a freshman in college at the time, and it stung... just kidding. I can't remember what grade I was in but it is amazing how something so small can stick with you for so long. And more importantly, why did I care what she thought?

I said that I was also naive, and when it came to girls I was absolutely clueless. If I had been able to get a girlfriend back then, I wouldn't have known what to do with her. I am not talking about sex or anything like that, though I do not even remember when the birds and bees talk came (or even if I ever got one from my dad). I knew that there was hand holding involved, going on dates and some kissing maybe. This naivete lasted well into junior high, when the whole interest-in-sex thing started to kick in. I remember my friends talking about a B.J. in study hall once and I just pretended that I knew what they were talking about. I had no clue. Wasn't that the truck driver who had a monkey named Bear?

The last thing that really plagued me is that I was incredibly shy, especially around girls. I don't know if it was a result of all the other issues I had, or was just there inside of me all along. Anyone who knew me back then might not believe this, but it was true. I played sports and got along with everyone, and was even voted class clown my senior year, but most of it was just an act. I would hide behind my sense of humor, and act like an idiot to avoid talking directly to girls. I keep going back to the topic of women, because let's face it, in high school, that was one of my biggest concerns. Yes, I wanted to get good grades and get into a good college, but more importantly: I wanted a girlfriend. And that is where having such a negative self image did not help me.

I had mentioned that I was voted class clown, but to be honest with you, this did not help me on my quest for a girlfriend. The reason for this was that the main source of my comedy was myself. I unmercifully made fun of myself around anyone who would listen. In some ways I thought if I made fun of myself first, it would prevent others from doing it. It sounds like very messed up logic, but I think it is common with people who have confidence issues. I certainly could make people laugh, but after pointing out all of my flaws, it was sure difficult to approach girls and ask them out. Instead of using my sense of humor to attract girls, I basically used it to reinforce my horrible sense of self loathing. How can anyone love you if you can't love yourself? There is truth in this, but it still sounds like Oprah psycho-babble.

By the time I got into junior high I was acutely aware of what I considered my many flaws. I felt like I was huge and ugly and because I was so shy, I didn't even have a personality to fall back on. This was before I really established myself as a comedic virtuoso, so I really did not feel I had a lot to look forward to. I had no confidence in myself and that, I believe, is the one trait most women look for in a guy. This is why the cute girls always seem to end up with the "assholes" and not the chubby nerds. My theory was proved correct one day when I walked into a classroom where I had left my books and someone had written on one of my notebooks, in very girly handwriting "Don't be fat." I can remember that upsetting me so much that I almost cried at my desk. I shouldn't have cared, but I did.

As junior high turned into high school, I remained girlfriendless and my self image continued its steady downward spiral. There had to be a reason I did not have a girlfriend. I watched others date and get girlfriends and do all the things I wanted to do, yet I was still alone. I thought it was going to be like a TV show or a movie: I would let my friends know I liked a girl. My friends would tell their female friends. The female friends would tell the girl I liked that I liked her. It would reverse back through the chain that she liked me too, and I would ask her out, and TA-DA! I would have a girlfriend. This goes to show you how naive I was. I was also so afraid of being rejected that I never really made it known who I wanted to date. Little did anyone know, I would have dated just about anyone. There were a couple of girls I pined for more than any of the others, but really I would have been fine with any number of my female peers.

One of the girls I pined for most was a girl I rode the bus with for many years. She was popular, a cheerleader, and--as I thought at the time--the most beautiful girl in the school. Aaaah, to be young and in love/lust. I actually worked up enough courage to sit next to her on the bus a few times and fire up a conversation. Unfortunately, it turned into me trying to get her to feel sorry for me. I was hoping that sympathy could turn into love, or at least like. My ultimate goal was that she would know how I felt about her because I sat down and talked to her. This was a technique I also tried to employ all the way through college (I am not going into college in this post). Needless to say, it did not work. Although my attempts at dating her failed, she did write a very nice note to me in my yearbook at the end of senior year. I looked back at it and reread it many, many times, wondering what would have happened if I just showed a little confidence and asked her out.

After I lost weight

Junior year of high school arrived and something miraculous happened. Over the summer I grew about an inch or two and lost twenty pounds. I was down to 180 pounds and looking good! Well, that is what I should have thought, but I didn't. I still saw the fat, ugly kid that no girls were interested in. Nobody could convince me that I was thin. Well, maybe if I had a girlfriend, she could have convinced me, but alas, that was not in the cards. I felt fatter back then than I did at any point in my life. (even now).

I ended up taking a friend of my brother's to my junior prom. She was someone I thought was very cute and would have loved to have dated. My brother had basically pre-asked her if she would go with me and she had said yes. Had I asked a girl I was interested in, without my brother arranging it in advance, it might hav built my confidence (unless she turned me down). It took me a while but I did finally did ask her to go with me. She said yes, and we went. We had a good time, I believe. Well, we didn't exactly go to the prom alone together. A friend of mine was taking a friend of hers so we decided to double date. It gave me a way to avoid direct interactions with my date. Most of the experience has faded, but the one thing I remember was my date's friend asking me to do something different with my hands because the way I was holding her during a slow dance was gradually pulling her dress down. I had never really danced before. I went to all of the school dances, but I just sat back in a corner with my friends complaining about the music, wishing someone would come ask me to dance. (If the music was so bad, why did I go to all the dances? That's where the girls were!)

I recall nothing about the after-prom party (and seeming I did not drink then or now, I have nothing to blame this on except my age), not even if my date went with me. I spent most of the party hanging out with my friends, fantasizing about prom party movies and hoping that some magic moment would materialize where the girl I had pined for all of this time confessed she loved me and we would sneak off somewhere shed our virginities. It did not happen--in fact, I don't even think I talked to a girl that night. Despite the lack of anything significant happening between me and my prom date, I figured the seeds of a relationship had been planted and perhaps something might blossom out of it. Unfortunately what happened that summer would scar me forever! (Okay, that was a little melodramatic, but read on, and you will see what I am talking about.)

My brother and his friend said that they were going to go camping up in Lake George that summer and that the girl I took to the prom was going to be at the campgrounds as well. I asked if I could go with them and they agreed. I was on cloud nine! I fantasized about asking her out, going out on the town, hand in hand, chilling together at the beach and making out at the campsite. My libido was on overdrive. The time came to go to the campground; she was there and things were going well. I got to hang out with her -- not alone, but still, I was trying to build up the courage to ask her out. Then one day she came over and asked if I would like to go down to the beach with her. I could have died right then. I was convinced, that after so many years of nobody showing any interest in me, here was a beautiful girl that liked me. She said yes to going to the prom with me, after all. Maybe she actually liked me and was not just doing a favor for my brother. (I had convinced myself that was the only reason she agreed to go to the prom with me.)

We went to the beach and lied there for a couple of hours. I tried to say a lot of things but my shyness was shutting my mouth down. I just stared at her, with my eyes 98% closed so she wouldn't see me watching her. Eventually it was time to go, and I hadn't asked her, but I was almost sure she would say yes when I did. Maybe when we got back to the campsite we would just sit and talk for a while, then I would ask. But as we were walking back she told me that she had to stop somewhere on the way back. Well, we ended up stopping at a store, where her boyfriend was waiting for her. I was crushed! On the way back to the campsite, I walked a little ahead of them to let them have some space, but really it was just so they wouldn't see the tears that were threatening to flood out of my eyes (yes, I am a cryer). To add salt in the wound, I overheard the two of them talking and her saying "You aren't jealous of HIM are you?" I don't know if she emphasized the "him" or not but my brain put it there. We got back to the camp, I climbed into my bed, put in the new cassette tape either I or my brother had just bought (Van Halen's 51/50), cranked it up and cried into my pillow.

To add a little more salt to the wound, I got fired up that evening, decided I was going to go wander the streets of Lake George, meet a cute girl, have my first kiss and have an awesome end of the trip. I would do anything that would help me forget all about the humiliation I just suffered. I showered, got dressed and headed out. Well I hadn't even got to the main street when I passed a group of young guys and girls. They looked at me and started laughing amongst themselves. I have never been a fashion plate, I will admit to that, and that night was no exception. I had and have no style, preferring comfortable, affordable clothes to expensive fashion. Well, after I passed the group and heard a couple of snide comments, I turned around and went back to the camp. I spent the night with Sammy Hagar (I would have preferred David Lee Roth, but, that ship had sailed, unfortunately.) Even typing this brings back all sorts of emotions. The thought of trying to win my prom date from her current boyfriend never crossed my mind. I was convinced that she asked me to the beach just because she took pity on me or maybe my brother had asked her to be nice to me. All I know is that, at the time, I was devestated, and my self confidence was even further in the hole.

Well, senior year of high school came and I had a whole school year to make a love connection. Unfortunately, there were no operators standing by. Senior year came and went, and still no girlfriend. I think I had just about given up by then. I figured if no one had shown any interest up until then, I must be unlovable. I still had a mega-crush on the one cheerleader who rode my bus and I kept trying to say something, but couldn't. Eventually I decided to put all of my hopes into college. Well there were a couple of almost girlfriends but I am realizing I am drifting away from what I wanted to talk about in the first place.

What I am trying to say, is that having a negative self image is a terrible thing. It is amazing how skewed one's view of one's self can be. You can convince yourself of almost anything, whether it is true or not. I was utterly convinced that I was ugly, fat and worthless when I was younger and to some degree, I feel some of those feelings still. It affected all the relationships I had, and affects the one I am in now. The big difference between then and now is that I have someone in my life who makes me feel that I actually am worth something. Some of the old insecurities creep in from time to time but overall, I have come a long way. Someday I will shed all of my insecurities and see myself as my wife sees me. Maybe then I can work up my self confidence, track down those girls who I had a crush on in high school and see if they would like to hook up.... just kidding!

On Siegfried, Roy and Me

The other weekend my daughter got invited to her first non-family birthday party. (She is such a social butterfly for only being a year and a half.) The three of us drove down to the party, which was a fairly long drive, but made even longer because I have not broken down and bought a GPS system yet. My wife looked up the directions on Trip Finder or some site like that and I wrote them down. My wife drove, I navigated, and we were able to find the party without too much trouble. Well there was one little hiccup but I will discuss that a bit later.

I don't know about you, but sometimes, I miss maps. Do you remember maps? They were wonderful.  I never felt  more like a true navigator than when I held an actual map in my hand. You could follow your progress, plan alternate routes and spend a good deal of time trying to fold the damn things. GPS technology is nice, but unless you know how it works (I usually don't take the time to learn all of the special functions of new gadgets I buy. Sad, I know.) you are just basically listening to a voice tell you where and when to turn. The map on the screen is not very large (even if you blow it up) and just not as simple as having one in your hand. And lets not forget my least favorite word to come out of a GPS system: "Recalculating."

The minor problem we ran into on our way to the party was the fact that the directions we looked up must have been based on the shortest distance, not the quickest or easiest way to get to our destination. If I had been paying a little more attention, I would have caught this fact. Unfortunately I discovered it "en route" and it was too late to make any adjustments. The directions said to get off at exit 14 of the NYS Northway and take a right. If I had thought about it, I would have noted that taking a right would bring us through the city of Saratoga, right near the race track, on the last weekend of the horse racing season. Needless to say, we got caught up in some terrible traffic and arrived 10-15 minutes late.

I do like having a GPS system, don't get me wrong. I will be getting one as soon as I accumulate enough money (and have nothing more important to buy) to purchase one. I have used my sister's on several occasions and thought I would share the two things I love the most about using a GPS system. First, there is the fact that you can change the voice that tells you where to go. I have been told where to go several times in my life; it is nice to have control of the voice that tells you. I love to use the female Australian voice for some reason. "G'day mate, take a left in 500 feet, and throw another shrimp on the barbie." Ok, it doesn't say stuff like that, but it would be pretty funny if it did. What if they had bad foreign stereotype voices as a selection? That would be wrong, but funny. A little old Chinese voice would say, "Most honorable driver. Take reft turn in 500 feet." Then a gong sounds or that little classic Chinese ditty they play in movies and TV shows goes off after every direction update.

The other thing I love is the estimated time of arrival. That is like crack to me. I watch that more than the road sometimes. Whatever the time of arrival is when we first set out becomes the time to beat, like a world record in the Olympics. I try to beat the time by as much as possible. When we had the GPS unit with us on a long trip my wife constantly heard me say things like "Shoot, I am 5 minutes behind, I can make that up." or "Okay, were half an hour ahead, let's hit the rest stop and make it quick. I don't want to lose my lead." I start treating rest stops like pit stops in NASCAR, watching the clock, and rushing people along. Pathetic. It may seem ridiculous at times, but it is things like this that help a long trip go by quicker.

But anyway, now that I went off on a long tangent about GPS vs. maps, lets get back to my original topic. We arrived at the party and it took a little bit for my daughter to warm up and get used to all the strange adults and kids. Not that I am saying they were strange, just new to her (and me for that matter, as the party was for the son of my wife's friend that she knew in Seattle). Once she got settled in and comfortable, she turned on the charm and was having a great time. That is when I started to get my Siegfried and Roy on. No, I did not have her mauled by a tiger. (Yes, anyone who knows me saw a tasteless joke like this coming. Well it probably was not tasteless for the tiger, I'm sure Roy was delicious! Okay, I apologize for that one too.) It was time to show off all her tricks.

First we had to pull out my favorite, her Count von Count impression. Yes, she has one! Whenever she sees the count or we set her up with some Count style counting, she will provide her Eeh Eeh Eeh. Then it was on to her Old MacDonald. If you sing Old MacDonald, she will provide the e i e i o. She sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Though most of the time she uses "dada" for all of the words but it almost sounds like she says "up above" at the appropriate part. The ABC song is coming along and she does hit some of the letters at the right time (the rest of the letters are all "da"). She loves to sing, and it is always amazing how well she gets the melodies correct for the songs she sings. She dances and loves to stack things. She uses just about any object as a telephone and answers it with a "Hewwo?" She is adorable. (And I am biased!)

Here is Gabby stacking blocks on the cat.

I ran her through her routine and she did great. I often have trouble getting her to perform in front of other people. When we get stopped by people in the store and they talk to her she gets all shy and won't do anything. Then I feel like an idiot. "Really, she can say Hi and Bye. She even gives a little queen wave." I tell them and of course she does it when they are out of sight. But at the party she had enough time to get comfortable, so she was on fire. People commented how cute she was and how smart she was. I was so proud. The party ended and we headed home. Now that I knew where we were, I took a much easier and direct route home.

After we were home for a while I began to reflect on the party. I had to ask myself a question: Why do we as parents feel the need to show off what our children can do? I am not the only one who does this, as other people have done the same thing to me many times. I do not mean to imply that exhibiting your child's skills is necessarily a negative thing, but what is it in our nature that makes us do it?

It is wonderful to be proud of your child, no matter what their age, and to want others to see how special they are. I sometimes question the motivations for showing off a child's skills to others, however. (This includes my motivations as well.) Children, particularly babies, don't generally care what others think about them; they are more excited by the reaction they get for successfully performing their tricks. Therefore, if you are treating your child like a seal at Seaworld because you love them and want others to see how proud you are of them that they can do something that you think is amazing, then you are doing it for the right reasons.

I don't think this is the motivation for too many parents, however. Some people seem to think that life is a competition and other children and adults are their opponents. It's the reason why we have shows like Toddlers &Tiaras. (I have never watched the show, and never will, because just from the trailers and photos I've seen, I would probably break my TV as I tried to punch the parents through the screen.) Some parents seem to get off on showing how much better their child is than yours and are quick to take all the credit for their child's accomplishments. They are the parents who are telling you how they are prepping their child for Harvard at age 2 because they are soooo brilliant. Thankfully, most of the people I know share my views on the subject.

I am not sitting on the floor with a Count doll three hours a day practicing and pushing her to perfect her impression. I do not have a box of cookies that I am using to teach her to do a Ted Knight laugh. I am not watching the Dog Whisperer and jotting down techniques that Cesar is using, to try on my daughter. I just enjoy watching her develop, learn and experience new things. I love watching her figure things out and discover new talents. Right now she is trying to figure out talking and it is amazing. You know she is trying to say something important, but she looks right at you and a stream of gibberish pours from her mouth.

Though I love the fact that she can do all of these amazing things, (well, amazing to me, because it seems like just yesterday she wasn't even crawling or saying a word), that is as far as it goes. I am not going to say she is the smartest kid ever or start making plans for her to go to Juliard. I will not compare her to other kids and criticize her or others for what they can or cannot do. Though you have to admit, a Count Von Count impression is pretty cool! Can your kid do one? I didn't think so! Gabby 1, Your kid 0! We win, woohooo!

On Door to Door Salesmen

I may lose some of you with this post but I had to bring up something that has been bothering me this summer. (When I say lose, I mean that some of you will read this post and say "OMG, me too!" and others will be scratching your heads saying "Uuh, What is he talking about?") Our home and, I suspect, houses throughout neighborhoods everywhere, have been over run by annoying pests this year. No, not mosquitoes, black flies or children. (Though that last one would have been a good guess, especially if you have kept up on my blog.) I am talking about door to door salesmen.

"Door to door salesmen?" I hear you asking yourself. "I thought that they didn't exist anymore." With the exception of the Girl Scouts (or the cookie mafia as my wife refers to them), I always assumed that they had gone extinct as well, like the dodo bird or honest politicians ('tis the season for political jabs). I can't ever remember having a vacuum cleaner or encyclopedia salesman show up at the door plying their wares. Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons have knocked at the door, and I guess they were trying to sell me salvation, but they were not "salesmen" in the strictest sense.

I think telemarketing has gone a long way toward minimizing this particular sales technique. Why pay someone to wander through the neighborhood when you can strap a phone to an employee in an office (usually in India) and make them sell? Not only that, but with the age we live in now, how likely is it that people are going to let strangers into their house? And this works in the opposite direction, as well. I wonder how much insurance the company would have to pay for having their employees going into a stranger's home? There are a lot of crazy people out there! Apparently the trend is coming back, though... well, kind of. I am talking about a particular type of sales technique that has been used on me at least six times so far this summer.

Let me describe the scene to you. You are sitting comfortably in your home, watching a rerun of The Big Bang Theory (I love this show, but I swear it is on everytime I turn on TBS. In fact, my wife just turned on TBS as a test, and indeed there it was.) when you hear a knock at the door (or hear a doorbell ring if you live in a fancy house.... well fancier than mine, anyway). You go to answer the door, look out on your stoop and see one or two people standing there. No, they are not Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons; they have on a uniform and are usually holding a clipboard. Nothing says you have an important job to do like a clipboard. Religious groups are usually armed with pamphlets or bibles.

One of the people looks at you and asks "Do you take care of the utility bills in the house?" If you say yes, they will respond with something like "I need to take a look at page 2 of your utility bill to make sure you have selected an energy supplier and to make sure that you are receiving the discounted rate." They never say they are with the electric company but they are very insistent about seeing that bill. The first time this happened to me and before I knew what it was about, I tried to blow the guys off by saying that I didn't keep a paper copy of the bill. I told them that it was kept electronically online. They asked me to get on my computer and pull the information up so they could check it out. They were willing to wait as long as it took, that was how important it was. Just to get rid of them I lied and said I did not have a computer at home. They said they would come back another day and suggested I print out a copy from wherever I had computer access and have it ready. They did come back a few days later, but I made up another excuse.

The sad thing is that there have been at least four different companies who have come to my house to get me to change my energy supplier. According to the pitch, unless I choose a service provider, our utility company (National Grid, in my case) will just willy-nilly pick an energy supplier at random. Our utility company doesn't care if we are getting the cheapest rate, but their company does. My curiosity got the better of me one day -- especially around the time that the second company showed up at my door with the same pitch, so I let one of them in.

The guy hit me with the sales pitch right away. I pulled the bill up on the laptop and had him look it over. He showed me where on the bill it showed how much I was being charged for the fuel delivery (or whatever it was). Then he told me how much they were offering the service for. It was indeed cheaper. The amount of savings was barely a penny. It was based on the amount of energy you used, and I did some quick calculations in my head and I would be saving a whopping 2-3 dollars per bill. It hardly seemed worth the effort these salesmen were putting in and I wondered how much the companies would make off of me. But still, 2-3 dollars off my utility bill was enough for me to sign up (yes, I am that cheap).

Well since I had chosen an energy supplier, I thought I would be all in the clear. I thought wrong. Next time someone showed up at the door I said with a smile on my face: "Sorry, I already went with another company." "Oh no," the guy said to me. "That's okay, we can fix this." The smile left my face. He went on to tell me that they were the only energy supplier that had permission to solicit in our town. According to him I should have called the cops on whoever was trying to get me to switch suppliers. He produced the shabbiest looking form I had ever seen, showed it to me and said it was a permit from the town. I think it said permit on top it and town of Hudson Falls. All the lines of the "form" were hand written and it did not look even a little bit legitimate. It must have been real because it seems like the salesman could get in a lot of trouble if they were called on this and it was proven false. (Maybe Hudson Falls just has terrible forms?) The energy salesman said that all I needed to do was fill out one of their applications and they would take care of the rest. They would get me out of the awful contract that I had mistakenly signed. I just couldn't take it anymore so I told them that it was all right, and that I was actually looking forward to paying more. They begrudgingly left with a bit of an attitude.

I do not mind somebody trying to sell me something. I did telemarketing for almost two years so I understand the game. The guys coming to the house were working off a script that they had been trained to use. It just happens to be a shitty script. The whole thing was such a hard sell that it pissed me off. The fact that these sales guys all insisted that they had to see my energy bill was ridiculous. They HAD to see page two of the bill. They NEEDED to confirm who my energy supplier was. No, they did not need any of these things. This approach is the one that probably had been tested and proven most successful by the people who come up with these sales scripts. The unsuspecting homeowner assumes that the salesmen are there on behalf of National Grid, or whoever their actually utility provider is and let them in. The salesmen go through their spiel, and sign the person up.

I'm not saying that these are scams, and I'm not saying they are not. I looked up the companies on the internet and there were scam indicators all over the place. People were accusing them of all sorts of things, but the biggest thing was the fact that they were so pushy. Others claimed that the savings only lasted for a brief time and that they had trouble contacting people to cancel. Some people even said that they were charged a fee to cancel the service. The guy I talked to addressed all of these issues and that is why I agreed to sign with them. Whether I get proven a sucker remains to be seen, but I will surely let you know if that happens.

As the summer has progressed my wife has suggested that we place a no solicitors sign on the door. I was oppossed to it, because these salesmen have been so pushy I am sure they would just ignore it. My suggestion was to hang a sign in the front yard that says "No, you do not need to see page 2 of my electric bill, now go away." Though that would have said it very succinctly, it certainly lacks style. I am all about style! So to spruce it up a bit, I could steal a little bit from Ben Franklin in his Epic Rap Battle of History versus Billy Mays and say something like "If you ask to see page 2 of my electric bill then call me Arthur Miller, son, because it will be Death of a Salesman." All right that may be a bit over the top, but I bet it would keep those energy pushers away.