Personal Narrative: A Career As An Acting Beeper

"I can't believe he did that! I'll get even for what happened." Revenge. Hot blooded or cold and calculated. Everyone has had occasion to seek revenge; to retaliate for some wrong, real or perceived.

For some, retaliation takes the ultimate and final form. Death. But for most people, just knowing that something was done, no matter how small, is enough to cool the desire to "get even." There are multitudes of ways to redress wrongs; however, in this paper I will just be talking of three ways satisfaction may be achieved. Due to the advent of caller id and caller return, phoning someone at all hours of the night is no longer an option. However, I knew that if I asked, a local company that leases beepers would give me the three digit prefixes for their little pagers.

Sometimes I reached an inactive number, but for the most part, the number I dialed reached an active beeper. When I did, I left my victims phone number. At least a hundred people called him, wanting to know why he called them. So many messages were left on his answering machine that he didn't bother to listen to it any more when he came home from work. Another way I gained revenge was more destructive and costly to the person involved.

The manager of the apartments my family and I lived in were set back away from the main road. One day the manager decided to put up a gate across the main entrance road. He used a simple chain and lock to secure it and gave a key to all the tenets. He did this without consulting anyone, or considering the consequences. After night fell, the gate was locked and the tenets would have to get out of their cars and unlock the gate by hand.

If it were raining, tough. Cold? Too bad! After asking repeatedly for the gate to be removed, I finally decided on a course of action. Late one night I filled the key hole with super glue. The stuff hardened and a key couldn't be put