“I just met a girl named Maria”

—“Loose as a goose!” I would say to my friend at Canandaigua’s YMCA swimming-pool.
What I did say was: “I'm no longer who I was three years ago when you first talked to me.”
Yrs Trly is trying to disconnect his landline.
Frontier-Communications, my landline service for eons, doesn’t want me to disconnect. My brother also advises against it, citing safety concerns.
Frontier makes disconnecting very hard, but they’re happy to bill me for a phone I never use.
They expressed concern I hadn’t paid for a while. I set up a bill-pay months ago, but it failed. Frontier just kept adding my new balance-due to previous balances-due.
Finally they wanted me to contact them. So I did, and I got a guy in India whose command of English was marginal.
“All I wanna do is disconnect,” I told him.
I was referred to their “Loyalty-department.”
Around-and-around with that lady I went, but she offered putting my landline “on-vacation,” which gives me the chance to pursue safety concerns.
She gave me the number and extension of her actual phone, so “who should I ask for?” I asked.
“My name is Maria,” she said.
“Thoughts of Leonard Bernstein and ‘Westside story’,” I said.
I started singing to her: “I just met a girl named Maria.”
I could hear her joy on the other end. “This guy is cute,” she’d say.
“Make ‘em laugh!” I told my hairdresser once. “Do that and you can get away with murder!”
This morning I got a voicemail from Maria. I can tell she hopes I’ll call back. Her phone, her extension, and “I look forward to hearing from you.”
Sounds like I made Maria, who I never met, and probably never will, a friend.
Go ahead, be a nut!
“Ya know where I first saw that movie?” I said to my lifeguard-friend later.
“Houghton, my college: Class-of-1966.
My friend is a native of Wellsville, NY, which is south of Houghton. (See footnote below.)
That pretty lifeguard picked up “Maria” immediately, which puts her in league with my wife — to whom I never had to explain anything.

• Back then viewing movies as a Houghton student was supposedly evil and Of-the-Devil. I was supposed to have written parental permission to view movies, but I don’t think I did because I was already perceived to be evil and Of-the-Devil.