It saddens me to know, however, that City Hall is on the verge of much more trouble. It says so right here in the paper. "A spokesman for the telecommunications giant said that SBC is optimistic that a resolution can be reached." Anyone experienced in phone bill discrepancies knows that this is phone-company-speak for, "we have you on our dung list. Learn to live with it."

Please, Mayor Laura Miller, I have come to respect and appreciate your straightforward manner. The trouble is that such an approach serves seriously to irritate telephone companies. Proof of this arrives to my mailbox every month when that pesky phone bill arrives. I am not referring to the one that informs me of dollars due for my current telephone usage. I pay that one. It is the bill I refuse to pay that I will use as an educational example.

First and foremost, please don't think bad thoughts of those folks in your organizations that tread quietly and subtly during their arbitration of disputed bills with a telephone company. They and I know things that possibly you do not. Namely that despite all efforts by the combined forces of all the powers of all the governments of our nation, the telephone company computers still rule. Breaking up the big one only spawned a plethora of smaller despotic entities. No matter what you do, you will be at the mercy of computer generated telephone accounting. Acting out with one of the entities only forewarns the others of your best moves. They have ways of communicating among themselves that we mere mortals do not comprehend.

Onward to my example:

Four years and six months ago I purchased a cell phone. Already I can hear the chuckles. No, I did not run up a huge gabfest, million minute usage bill. As a matter of fact, I used the gadget very little, hardly at all. I figure my limited usage is what caused the problem. I did not use it enough and it peevishly acted out due to my penny-pinching neglect.

Please excuse me. I use so many forms of gadgets that I sometimes have a tendency to attribute human personalities to them - anthropomorphization I believe it is called.

Anyway, the troubles with my cell phone billing became so confused that it is difficult to isolate the realities of causation. In my efforts to keep my account manageable, I spent many - many - ergs of frustration learning of telephone peculiarities. I was downright proud when I figured out how to program it to remember my "land line" number. I even puffed up with accomplishment whenever I said "land line." I studied all about charges, surcharges, free minutes, off-hours, prime time, holiday, weekend, monthly roll-over, roaming, long distance, as well as a book full of more obscure definitions.

My first bill was so thick it literally burst the seams of the envelope. I found this curious considering how careful I had been when using it. Come to find out every time I made a call I was incurring a whole list of extra charges.

After the first half-hour of a complaint shuffle with the billing department I actually received an apology. A supervisor told me that someone down at the billing place had flipped a wrong switch and they had me listed with the wrong rate structure. I felt a certain bit of pride in having proved a phone company wrong. That was before I realized that it is of no consequence to them if they are wrong. It was also before I realized that corrected bills led to a string of more bills neading to be corrected.

After six months of new and different errors followed by new and different apologies I became so intimidated I was afraid to use the thing. Not one of the bills they sent me was correct - not one. Of the well over a hundred errors I uncovered during the year oddly enough not one of them was in my monetary favor. Even more oddly enough than that, I did not make as many as a hundred calls.

I rediscovered pay phones. That did no good. Even idle the thing generated extra charges. After nine months I tried to cancel and was actually laughed at. I had committed and the contractual child was mine. It became a matter of which was more expensive to me - my loss of work time spent correcting the bills or just paying the bill. Then things got bad.

When a particularly egregious bill appeared after a month during which I had not only left the phone unused but also did not charge the battery, I lost my temper. I am not sure whether it was the third or the fourth supervisor but sometime during the second hour I swear one of them said, "Oh pooh on you people". I yelled at her.

I really did try to apologize but it was too late. Despite the facade of geniality that decorated the end of our conversation I knew I was doomed.

The inevitable happened. My car broke down. Of course it did. And, of course it was late-night-early-morning, of course it was on a deserted road while on was on a trip and in Florida. I pulled The Phone from my glove compartment where it had been relegated for emergency use only. I plugged it in with the special cigarette lighter plug and punched the listed number for the road-side assistance I had been paying for with my monthly bill. I was connected with a very nice lady but it turned out to be a wrong number. She was very understanding, "Oh, I know how it is to be stranded like you are. I only wish I could help."

Every subsequent attempt to contact with the world resulted in a dead line. After a ruined day of walking and thumbing my way, I called to complain. I was informed that the phone had been cut off for non-payment. That I connected to a wrong number earlier was a mystery and/or of suspicious imagination.

I still get my cancelled checks with my bank statement. Sure enough, when I got back to Dallas the cancelled check to Sprint for that cell phone for the dates in question was in my files as evidence of prompt payment. Again, they were very apologetic. But then came the really screwy part. I had less than two months left on the contract but they said that if I canceled I had to pay the full penalty. And no, they would not accept cancellation without the full penalty until the day the contract expired. The contract was written to automatically renew if I did not cancel and they would not let me cancel in advance. I asked the boss of the boss of the agent I spoke to first and was assured this was true. I asked the same question three different ways. The only thing that changed about the answer was the manner of the boss's voice. She became more cheerful each time.

As it happened, I missed the exact date and ended up owing them for one day. It had something to do with the time the phone was actually turned on. No, that is not the bill I refuse to pay. When I cancelled they sent me a final bill. I paid it. A month after that I received another bill from them. It was a corrected statement that indicated I still owed them.

Pavlov was right about his training concepts. I felt like it was my responsibility to clear up the confusion of that final bill. For three months each time the bill would come I would spend hours trying to correct the confusion. Each time they would apologize and tell me to ignore the bill and each month another bill would come. Finally I gave up.

Still they say that I owe them. For over three years I have received a monthly bill from Sprint in the amount of fifty-two cents. My eighty plus year old uncle took two copies with him to Sunday School to prove he wasn't lying. That is not a misprint. Fifty plus two cents, not dollars, cents. A period followed by a five and a two. The little smart aleck that hides in me gets some small pleasure in knowing that every time they send me their bill it costs them more than any potential payment.

Good luck settling with your phone company, City Hall. I really do wish you well. And, as for you personally, Ms Mayor, as I said, I have learned to admire your tenacity. In that vein I suggest that before you get yourself too involved in the billing imbroglio that you consult a motion picture film library and find a copy of the movie titled "The President's Analyst". In it James Coburn plays the part of an accomplished psychiatrist trying to help the President unwind from the tortures of governing. Guess who turns out to be the film's major antagonist.

patrig