Tales of a bored houswife
When Print Classifieds Get Strange
By Joseph Friedrichs, 11-30-09
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| A lingering trace of people unknown. Photo by Joe Friedrichs. | |
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The ad was simple: “Bored Housewife seeking legitimate work, bondable, wage negotiable.”
I came across these words while scanning through the ‘Looking For Employment’ section of the Saturday, Nov. 28, edition of the Bend Bulletin. Some help around the house would be nice, I thought. What the heck?
I called the number listed in the ad and was instantly greeted with the voicemail of a woman named Shawnda. After leaving a short, polite message, I set down the classified section and picked up the sports page. Then I went and sat on the toilet for about 25 minutes.
Shawnda didn’t return my call until the following morning. My phone rang just after 11 a.m. Sunday, and I knew instantly something was strange.
“My husband says I’m riding his coattails,” Shawnda explained. “I need…”
And then her voice trailed off.
I explained to Shawnda that I was looking after a friend’s place while he was fulfilling his duties with the Oregon legal system. We (Shawnda and I) agreed to meet Monday at 1 p.m. to discuss what work would be needed in and around the house.
“I can bring some cleaning supplies,” she stated.
“Let’s meet first and talk about what we might need done,” I replied.
Well, 1 p.m. Monday came and went. No Shawnda. I placed a few phone calls to her and heard nothing in response. Shawnda had vanished.
Rather than feeling down about the situation, I decided to do some research. A piece written by Peter Weddle filled me in on a few facts.
“Many ads simply deliver the wrong message,” Weddle wrote.
Somewhere in this world there is a “Bored Housewife seeking legitimate work.” She is bondable and her wages are negotiable.
The only question now is, where?
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Comments
Eat a couple of cups of Activa yogurt with fiber each day, and you can cut that toilet time to a third.
I fear for the checks and balances provided by the free press, which diminish daily. We all must subscribe to our local weeklies, because they are our hope for a continuing protection of our freedoms. Electronic data exchanges are not. And television is a joke, a lost cause, and fast going the way of the dead tree press. You can see the whole of the previous nights television local news on page 3 in one and two column inch stories, a perusal of which takes less than a minute. US papers are not like Mexican newspapers, where the crime scene photos with all the blood and gore, dismemberment, assassinations, explosion results, are all right there in full color on half a page. I don't watch Mexican television so I have no idea of how they report their news. The British papers have topless babes to entice a segment of the public. And then you realize it is all commerce, actually, and dollars drive the process to success or failure. The above story will not raise the expectations of the internet reader. A subscription to the local weekly county newspaper will at least allow them to survive because their needs are less, and our help can do so much more.