The Pager Ceremony

Today we received our pagers, picked from a disappointingly unceremonious fold-out card table covered in bic pens and old school motorolas that weigh 2lbs and probably emit enough radiation to glow in the dark. The kind of pager banned from high schools in the early 90's because only drug dealers carried them, supposedly. They might even be refurbished 90's drug paraphernalia, the telecommunications equivalent of the 'Ghetto Blaster.'

Since the school was heartless enough to so carelessly distribute the millstones to be worn around our necks for the next 40-60 years, I devised a 'Pager Ceremony' for myself and my roommate Kendall. Ideally there would have been a guy with a bull horn, holding a pager over his head shouting "statistically this device will ruin 1/4 of all marriages you as a group undertake, be responsible for 61% of your gray hairs, 88% of your childrens' missed birthday parties, recitals, and graduations, 92% of the weight you will gain, the tums you will swallow, the coffee you will drink, the sleep you will lose. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"

Since that person was markedly absent, I stepped in, spoke thusly, and handed Kendall his pager placed inside of an (empty) Spam can, since that's what he'll be eating for the next 8+ years. He in turn asked me the same immortal question "Are you sure you want to do this?" and handed me my Albatross within a can of Espresso, since that will be my fuel for the coming decade.