Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 19, 1991 TAG: 9102190023
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You have seen him/her here before. We are talking about the Furnace-Listener, a pitiable human being to be sure.
These wretches were lying awake in great numbers during the recent coldest weather of the winter.
I will say here that I belong to this group, and that this will not keep me from being objective as we explore these poor people further.
The typical Furnace-Listener is the type of person who worries about everything in normal times and becomes a world-class negative thinker when he/she is kept awake by what we researchers call the Conviction That Your Furnace Will Never Cut Off Once It Cuts On And Vice Versa Syndrome.
Persons who have suffered for long periods with this disorder will become skillful at thinking up things to worry about.
It is a matter of record, for example, that at least one aging sufferer - who had worn out worries about money, sudden death, snakebite and other horrors - shifted to a rather novel worry.
This was that the traffic light at Virginia 419 and U.S. 221 would some day go nuts and refuse to let any traffic move on 221, north or south.
This would not, as our worrier pointed out, be the very best thing for the economies of Bent Mountain, Copper Hill, Check, Simpsons and Floyd.
Actually, although this may sound extreme to people who do not have to put up with this traffic light, there is a slight justification for this worry.
Even non-furnace listeners who know this light often get the panicky feeling that it does intend to cut off 221 from the rest of the world eventually.
Our research turned up a much younger furnace listener who said he didn't worry as he lay awake.
He claimed he was able to think instead of having made a "hot date" with Sigourney Weaver.
(The words "hot date" represent the way the subject expressed himself and is not intended to be offensive to Sigourney or your Aunt Zelda.)
When pressed, however, he admitted worrying Sigourney would break the date and go out with Richard Gere instead - whereupon he, the furnace listener, would throw himself from the tallest building he could find.
We can see these people clearly have gone nuts.
They are, however, able to blend in well with the crowd at the City Market.
Except for the few who have been deprived of sleep to the extent that they faint into the Mexican tomatoes.
by CNB