21st Century Telegram

Today, since it is Sunday, I did something especially moronic. I left my cell phone turned off till 4pm, at which point in time, my brain finally warmed up, and it’s stone age wheels started turning, and I figured that since I do actually have a phone, I should turn it on and see what the Lord and his marvelously sick sense of humor had in store for me on this magnificent Sunday afternoon in the greatest of all Islands. So as I turned it on, I stared at it for a few moments and heard the hypnotizing sound of a message alert. And there it was, in all its glory…“Office building was on fire, come early tomorrow.”
I don’t know how many people have ever received a message the likes of this one, and I really don’t know how a normal, logical person would react to a message like this, as I have enough clarity of mind to admit to being highly illogical, and definitely abnormal. After breaking into a cold sweat, I started dialing my friends number, and after letting it ring a dozen times with no answer, my brain, right there and then, collapsed. You see, I remembered the heater that is under my desk, and I remembered how I never remember to shut this heater off. In addition to this, I also pictured the piles of papers on my desk and under my desk, and my brain kept on playing this one image, over and over again: One of my papers being too close to the heater, and it slowly catching fire, and the fire spreading quickly, and the whole office being destroyed by the fire, and all my coworkers and my boss standing outside, looking at the entire building, their entire life and work, slowly and painfully go up and smoke. The torment of what my brain was doing to me this Sunday afternoon did not stop there though. No, after imagining all this, I pictured my boss and my coworkers looking around them, and realizing that I was missing from this horrific spectacle, and I pictured them remembering me, and my heater, and my supreme idiocy, and after piecing it all together, I imagined my boss turning to all my coworkers, with the ashes of all their work falling like little snow flakes on them, and saying “Where is Norma?”
When I finally received a phone call from my friend, I was leaning on one of the walls of my house, with both my hands clutching my head in desperation. My friend explained that not only was our office fine, but that the fire began in the basement of our building and the only thing that it had affected was the power in it. And that was it. For some reason my brain right there and then made a quick turn, and suddenly I thought of all the people that would receive various telegrams back in the 1800's, and the utter confusion, and the incredible anxiety they must have felt when they would read " Uncle Ed is shot. Come right away" or "Our cattle has disappeared. Where are you?" or " I am angry. We will talk later." And so on and so on.