3
A dear friend of mine, who would probably be mortified if I mentioned her name here, so I won’t, and I used to kid about something years ago that I’m amazed I’ve never written about here or elsewhere, so I’ll mention it now (since I’ve been thinking about it lately), and hope that no one with feisty lawyers has written about it before:
The “3″ button from Verizon’s voicemail system, applied to real life.
Whenever someone starts talking about some shit you don’t want to hear, you should be able to just say or think “3!” and have them shut up, the way you can when you’re listening to your voicemail on Verizon’s system and you delete a message that’s in the progress of playing. You just hit that 3 button, and you don’t have to hear another second of whatever it is that you don’t want to hear. Actually, sometimes, I do just think it whenever someone is talking that I really don’t want or need to hear.
“3!”
It’s so simple, but it does seem to help a little. I should do it more often.
3!