What a coincidence! While Muffy was contemplating this disturbing bit of cell phone trivia, the ambulance driver had been tuning through stations on the radio. He stopped on KBUZ (which, as we all know, is the local talk station where anything and everything is talked about).
A caller was commenting on the very article that Muffy was so disturbed about. The caller cited further clinical studies had been performed, and that the results were as follows: the initial study had been limited to an 11-year old boy and a 13-year old girl named Jennifer. They tried the very same tests on a 12-year old boy (un-named, as was the 11-year old boy in the first study), and on a 12-year old girl named Kathleen (unlike the name of the 13-year old girl in the initial study).
The results of the additional tests indicated completely opposite results from the first set of tests, thus igniting a controversy over cell phone usage by children between the ages of 11 and 13. The cell phone manufacturers were claiming that the first set of results were staged by anti-cell phone activists to give cell phones a bad reputation (as if they needed a worse reputation), while the anti-cell phone activists were claiming that the second set of results were staged by the cell phone manufacturers to cast doubt on the first set of results (as if studies like that needed more critics). The caller questioned whether cell phones only affected 11 year old un-named boys, and 13-year old girls named Jennifer. Or, perhaps 12-year olds were physically immune to the effects of cell phones. The KBUZ commentator, always alert for controversial subjects that will capture his audience's attention (and hopefully raise KBUZ's listener count ... and ratings), said in his deep resonant radio voice, "uh ..."
Just as the ambulance pulled up to the hospital, the KBUZ talk-station moderator broke to commercial, with promises to pick up the same topic after "a few words from our sponsors".
The hospital admitting staff ran to the back door of the ambulance, opened it, and took Muffy by the hand.
"No!", shouted Muffy. "I'm not going ANYWHERE until I hear the final verdict on cell phones!"
At this seemingly off the wall comment from the newcomer to the Outdated Institution for Mental Diseases of the Exceedingly Dense, Doltish & Dull, the hospital staff members looked at each other knowingly, rolled their eyes, and pulled a straight jacket out of its compartment on the rollaway bed.
Muffy saw what they were intending to do, and began to kick and scream. "No, no, no !!! I need to know the names of those two young boys!"
At that comment (even more off-the-wall than the first one), the lead hospital staffer pulled a syringe out of his smock pocket, and made a mental notation to mark this new patient as a possible sexual deviant (as if the hospital needed any more of those). |
