
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 3, 1993                   TAG: 9308030119
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COULD IT BE A TELEPHONE CONSPIRACY? TWO THREE

There is this woman on the phone who is telling me I've won this contest I don't remember entering.

She is talking very fast, but it seems I've won two days at a resort that may or may not be named Twilight Tides.

I'm not interested in going to Twilight Tides and getting a real estate pitch. This is not to say I have anything against such pitches. It is to say that I like to sleep - or at least do my version of this human necessity - in my own little bed.

I would like to tell this fast-talking woman that she should get off the phone because I'm expecting a call any minute from Bill Clinton, but this woman can talk, pal.

I would also tell her what she can with Twilight Tides.

This kind of things goes on all the time. I am getting more suspicious of my fellow man and woman was I grow older, and I sense a telephone conspiracy here.

I believe that callers like the Twilight Tides woman get a considerable number of people to take them up on their offer.

These callers also know that if they keep calling up people who like to sleep in their own little beds, these unfortunates may well turn to 900 numbers that allow them to talk to a real psychic.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Twilight Tides has stock in a 900 psychic number.

I have no idea of what a real psychic could say to help me. I don't even know what a real psychic looks like - except the female ones on television wear short skirts and operate out of dimly lit rooms.

I don't know why you have to wear short skirts to be a real psychic.

Anyway, I guess you call up a real psychic and she asks you in a soothing voice why your life seems to be spinning out of control.

And you say it's these telephone calls from places like Twilight Tides that are driving you nuts - not to mention various unenlightened callers who think you have money to invest in stocks and bonds.

And she says perhaps you should spend a few days at Twilight Tides, because a destiny you never dreamed of is waiting for you there. Once you have confronted this destiny, your life will stop spinning out of control.

Indeed, she says, just look at all of those happy people in the television commercials who met their destinies at Twilight Tides or elsewhere and no longer spin.

I want to make it plain that the above is pure conjecture on my part. I haven't talked with a real psychic, and have no intention of ever doing so.

But if I did, I'd tell her to go home this instant and get out of the dress and put on something decent.

Like a calf-length shirtwaist, maybe.

by CNB