On a recent weekend in Las Vegas, a woman won a bucketful of quarters at a slot machine. She took a break from the slots for dinner with her husband in the hotel dining room. But first she wanted to stash the quarters in her room. "I'll be right back and we'll go to eat," she told her husband and carried the coin-laden bucket to the elevator.

As she was about to walk into the elevator she noticed two men already aboard. Both were black. One of them was tall...very tall...an intimidating figure. The woman froze. Her first thought was, These two are going to rob me. Her next thought was, Don't be a bigot! They look like perfectly nice gentlemen. But racial stereotypes are powerful, and fear immobilized her.

She stood and stared at the two men. She felt anxious, flustered and ashamed. She hoped they didn't read her mind but Gosh; they had to know what she was thinking!!! Her hesitation about joining them in the elevator was all too obvious now. Her face was flushed. She couldn't just stand there, so with a mighty effort of will she picked up one foot and stepped forward and followed with the other foot and was on the elevator. Avoiding eye contact, she turned around stiffly and faced the elevator doors as they closed. A second passed, and then another second, and then another. Her fear increased! The elevator didn't move. Panic consumed her. My God, she thought, I'm trapped and about to be robbed!

Her heart plummeted. Perspiration poured from every pore. Then one of the men said, "Hit the floor." Instinct told her to do what they told her. The bucket of quarters flew upwards as she threw out her arms and dove to the elevator floor. A shower of coins rained down on her. Take my money and spare me, she prayed.

More seconds passed. She heard one of the men say politely, "Ma'am, if you'll just tell us what floor you're going to, we'll push the button." The one who said it had a little trouble getting the words out. He was trying mightily to hold in a belly laugh.

The woman lifted her head and looked up at the two men. They reached down to help her up. Confused, she struggled to her feet.

"When I told my friend here to hit the floor," said the average sized one, "I meant that he should hit the elevator button for our floor. I didn't mean for you to actually hit the floor, ma'am."

He spoke genially. He bit his lip. It was obvious he was having a hard time not laughing. The woman thought: My God, what a spectacle I've made of myself. She was humiliated to speak. She wanted to blurt out an apology, but words failed her. How do you apologize to two perfectly respectable gentlemen for behaving as though they were going to rob you? She didn't know what to say. The three of them gathered up the strewn quarters and refilled her bucket.

When the elevator arrived at her floor they then insisted on walking her to her room. She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, and they were afraid she might not make it down the corridor.

At her door they bid her a good evening. As she slipped into her room she could hear them roaring with laughter as they walked back to the elevator. The woman brushed herself off. She pulled herself together and went downstairs for dinner with her husband.

The next morning flowers were delivered to her room - a dozen roses.

Attached to EACH rose was a crisp one hundred dollar bill. The card said: "Thanks for the best laugh we've had in years." It was signed Eddie Murphy and Michael Jordan.

Copyright © 2002 Loren Moore
All rights reserved

Dinosaur
by Loren Moore

I'm a dinosaur. I admit it. I make no bones about it. But I have a friend named Tom that's dragging me from the dark ages into the sunlight of 1999. I'm kicking and screaming all the way but with Tom's perseverance I'm getting there.

I still had a rotary dial telephone until recently. Tom very gently suggested I check with the telephone company to see how much it would cost to swap to push button service. Well three or four days later I'm trying to call my doctor for an appointment and after his telephone tells me to push one for this and push two for that and push three for something else, I give up. I never do get to talk to a live person and I don't get an appointment.

I think Tom's right; maybe I should just bite the bullet and pay the extra money for touch tone service. I'm thinking it will probably be $10 or $12 a month more than I'm paying now but at least I can make an appointment to see my doctor. So I call the phone company.

Wouldn't you know it; the first thing I hear is push 1 for this and push 2 for that and push 3 for something else. But at the end of all that, when they ran out of buttons to push, this recorded voice says if you can't push any buttons wait and a service representative will speak to you.

"Hallelujah!" Maybe there's a live person there after all. After waiting sixteen minutes I'm about to give up and hang up when all of a sudden I hear this voice saying, "Can I help you?"

I'm so wrapped up in the loud music and this voice saying every fifteen seconds, "Do not hang up. Your call is important to us. The next service representative that's free will answer your call."

Free from what? I wonder. A trip to the bathroom, her coffee break, or maybe from the game of solitaire she's playing on her computer? Anyway when this voice says "Can I help you?" all I can think of to say is, "Are you a machine or a real person?" The voice assures me that she is a real person. By this time I've collected my wits and remember why I'm calling. I explained my problem.

"How much will it cost me to change my service from rotary to touch tone?" I asked.

She said for me to wait a minute and let her pull up my account on her computer. Then she said, "Oh there you are, Mr. Moore."

"Yes ma'am," I said, "I know where I am, and I just want to know how much it will cost me."

"No," she said, "I mean there you are in my computer. To change your service from pulse to tone will cost you 18-cents a month more than you are paying now with a one time charge of $19.00 to change you over."

Eighteen-cents a month! Now I'm not usually too emotional, but thinking about all the pain and suffering I've gone through because I couldn't push 1, 2, and 3, I broke down completely and started crying. The service rep misunderstood me completely. She told me to hold on for a minute and let her speak to her supervisor. When she came back on line she told me her supervisor had authorized her to drop the one time $19 charge. All it would cost would be eighteen-cents a month. I managed to get out a "Thank you" between sobs and hung up.

The next time I talked to Tom, I mentioned I had to go to the bank the next day to renew a CD. Tom asks me what interest rate the bank was paying me. I told him it was drawing 4.65% interest on a 12 month CD.

"Oh," he said, "is that all?"

Well you don't have to hit me over the head with a two by four. I knew that question meant something, so I asked Tom what interest his CD's were drawing. Tom told me he didn't have his money in CDs. He had his money in mutual funds and some of them had paid him a rate of 32% over the last 12 months. I started crying again. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

Tom showed me how to invest in mutual funds and suggested some funds I might try. He told me these funds could go up or down. There was no guarantee that I wouldn't lose money instead of making money. Once again he got me to take one more step out of the dark ages.

The last time I talked to Tom he said a word that almost made me faint. He said, "Computer." When someone says computer to me, I throw up both hands and run backward.

My typewriter is still a manual typewriter. The thought of jumping from a manual typewriter to a computer is mind boggling to me. It hasn't been long since I made the leap from a manual transmission to an automatic transmission in my pickups.

Now Tom is trying to drag me from a manual typewriter to a computer. No way! But Tom is persistent. He keeps telling me all these things I can do with a computer, like keep a record of my household expenses. "But Tom, I can do that with a pencil and piece of paper," I say.

He says, "You can keep a record of how much you spend on gasoline for your pickup."

"But I can do that with a pencil and a piece of paper." I said.

He says, "You can keep up with the kind of medicine you take and when you will need to get more."

"But I can do..."

"Yeah, I know," he says, "You can do that with a pencil and piece of paper. All right, how about this: you can play solitaire on your computer. Can you do that with a pencil and piece of paper?"

Well, he had me there, so I told him, "Okay, I'll go buy a computer." One small step for Tom, one giant step for me. If Tom keeps on, by the year 2000, I might be out of the dark ages and into modern times.

Copyright © 1999 Loren Moore
All rights reserved

Born in a oil company camp near Gladewater, Texas, in 1932, Loren Moore married his high school sweetheart, Johnnie Pritchett, in the year he graduated. From there, he moved to Arlington, Texas, where he worked as an assembler at the General Motors plant and stayed until he retired as manager of the paint shop.

Loren writes: "I'm 70 years old and have been married to my wife Johnnie for 51 years. My hobbies have always been hunting and fishing. I'm an uneducated redneck from the piney woods of East Texas. Now that I'm in my old age and do most of my hunting and fishing in my memory, I decided to write about some of my experiences. These stories are about 90% true and 10% fiction. My wife, Johnnie, says they are 10% true and 90% fiction. Maybe they are somewhere in between."

Mr. Moore has recently assembled some of his stories into soft-bound books published by TwinOaks Publishing (pictured here). To obtain one of his books, you can write him at this address.

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