Birthdays come but once a year, which is a drag because on that one day I’m treated like a queen and even get away with not having to cook dinner. Mine was yesterday, and I’m sure by the time this is published I will be basking in the afterglow of a wonderful day. Do not fret, however, if you missed it, because in my house we have birthday week, which allows me to get away with a lot for the week, except preparing dinner. I will graciously continue to accept gifts, and if you need a hint, I’m still waiting for my Rolex watch, preferably in rose gold.

    One of my jobs here at The Star is to write the holiday “Relay” columns. Since August is devoid of national holidays and the only ones I could find online were Water Quality Month, Admit You’re Happy Month, and Eye Exam Month, I thought my birthday would present a good excuse to write a column.

    And since my license expired on my birthday, I did commemorate Eye Exam Month by having an eye exam at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Riverhead on Monday — a big mistake, as Monday, I learned, is their busiest day of the week. Instead of celebrating and drinking champagne in honor of Eye Exam Month, I sat on those wooden benches waiting for my number to be called for almost two hours! And don’t even get me started on what the traffic was like.

    At times I’ve hated having a summer birthday. It meant there were no cupcakes in school or a special crown to wear for the day. I really wanted to be queen for the day at my Catholic school just to see if the nuns would be nicer to me.

    When I was in St. Thomas of Aquinas High School in the Bronx I had a nun who absolutely hated me for no reason. She was a mean, nasty old bird who I’m sure is long gone by now, so I can talk about her. I was blond and usually smelled of the cigarettes we all sneaked in the back of the public buses we rode. She was ugly and forced to wear a black-and-white habit every day, which I’m sure was uncomfortable, as she constantly wore a pained, pinched look. We were bad little high school girls and wanted to ask her if her panties were in a pinch but knew we’d get a good smack across the face for it. It still amazes me that they were allowed to hit us.

    She told me I was disgusting and made me move to the back of the class so she wouldn’t have to look at me or smell my 15-year-old tobacco-stained fingers. To this day my self-esteem suffers from her cruel remarks. I guess I should be glad my birthday was in summer, as she may have made me sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap to celebrate. Yes, she was that mean, and a dunce cap never would have worked with my naturally frizzy hair.

    When we were kids, birthdays were a big event. I got to pick out whatever I wanted for dinner that night and usually chose lobster or spaghetti and meatballs. As we got older, on our big day we wore special corsages that were decorated according to our age with things like bubble gum, Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, or dog biscuits. They were supposed to remain pinned to your shirt for the whole day. But when a line of hungry-looking dogs started following me on my 14th birthday, I gave up and tossed them the corsage and ran like hell all the way home, with two of them following me the whole way.

    Okay, maybe it wasn’t a pack, but there were three of them. Okay, maybe two of them were mine and the third my next-door neighbor’s dog, Buffy, but they were gazing longingly at my dog biscuit corsage, and I wanted to make it to my 15th without being torn apart by hungry dogs. Oh, and did I mention I was a bit of a teenage drama queen?

    Having an August birthday usually meant good weather. I remember waking up in our beachfront home on City Island and smiling because it was my day and not one I had to share with my three siblings. The sunny, cool days were the best. I could always tell if it was a windy day from the sound of the sailboat riggings clanging against their masts from the boat club next door to us. To this day when I hear a sailboat rig clanging, I smile a little smile, and look over my shoulder for a pack of dogs.

—

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer at The Star.

    With no preliminaries or even a “How do you do,” a man walked up to me as I was looking at the surf on Sunday afternoon and asked, “Can anyone be here?”

    I knew what he was trying to say, but being in somewhat of an ill temper at the time, I played dumb. “What do you mean?” I said.

    “Can anyone surf here or is it just for fishermen?” he asked. Then he proceeded to follow up with a number of questions, trying to find out exactly where he might go, under what conditions, and which parking permits he might need. To say that my responses were vague would be an understatement.

    As I was heading away from the beach, another guy turned to ask, “The surf’s pretty bad, right?”

    “Right,” I said, and kept walking.

    On my way west, I stopped at the Montauk 7-Eleven for a liter of seltzer. My mood brightened considerably as a man of about 30 on the line behind me whipped out his cellphone and loudly related a story about a friend whose dance-floor misadventures the night prior had resulted in his going home alone once again.

    The phone call was loud and inappropriate and out of place, and the guy was speaking clearly enough so that no one on that side of the store could have missed a word. Still, it was a downright funny story, and I walked out with a grin.

    Within a half-hour, I was parked at another ocean beach. There, a woman about to go body-boarding started talking to me about the waves. As she went off down the beach, a man came around the side of my truck to do the same. I had recently had a haircut; could it have been a special style that fairly screams, “I welcome all questions from strangers?”

    In times past (and here I go sounding like a geezer), it was unthinkable to walk up to someone on the beach and expect to get all the local knowledge just for the asking. Surfers, like hard-core anglers, were traditionally protective of their secrets and those who wanted a peek behind the curtain had to pay their dues before even a little would be revealed.

    So what has changed? My guess is that it has a lot to do with the Internet, where just about any question that might pop into a person’s head can be answered in an instant. Combine that with the false familiarity of Facebook and other social media, and you have a brave new world in which it’s okay to expect a stranger to spoon-feed you with the information you require. On the plus side, though, you overhear a lot more funny stories.

    My wife got up to take communion at Tom Bergmann’s funeral at Most Holy Trinity Church the other day, and I must admit I, unshriven as usual, was a bit surprised.

    But she reminded me later that she thought of the rite differently, that it had to do for her with bounteous nature and our humble place in it rather than with any pastoral proscriptions or learned behavior.

    The next morning, interestingly, I, who had been between books for a while, decided to pick up Helen Vendler’s “Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries,” which my sister had given me for Christmas, to read, and there, on page 17, I met Mary’s kindred soul:

    In the name of the Bee —

    And of the Butterfly —

    And of the Breeze — Amen!

—

    And now I’d like to turn over this column to Max Bergmann, Tom’s young son, who had this to say to everyone there:

    “My father was a builder. He built wonderful relationships with his family and friends and he built beautiful objects. One of my fondest memories is of building a bookcase with him after he had noticed all the books strewn around my room. We spent every day over the next couple of weeks in our garage working on this project. I’m sure this was much the way it was when he built his first house with help from his brothers. What I realized then about my father was how meticulous and patient he was, and that everything he created with his hands was a simple masterpiece.”

    “He also knew how to put things together in beautiful combinations. His antiques store was an extension of his awesome creative sense. His respect for building extended into every aspect of his life. He formed deep relationships with all of us. He was the most giving, loving, and thoughtful man I have ever known.”

    “You could always count on my father. He found in his solitude wisdom, enlightenment, and a height of nderstanding that not many could match. The joy that emanated from him knew no boundaries, and made everyone around him feel loved and happy. His sense of humor reflected his intelligence and enabled him to be a social man in any type of situation.”

    “My father’s shoes are impossible to fill because he was such a unique and wonderful person. He cared for us all, and the world around him — more than for himself. Unfortunately, young and old alike will meet with death at one point. I can truly say that he lived a beautiful life.”

    “The last time I saw my father I had come to New York purely by chance after being mugged and badly beaten. When my dad saw my face he burst into tears. Our bond was so deep, our connection so strong that just seeing me in that state caused him to feel my pain wholeheartedly.”

    “His emotions were so pure and true, his love so boundless, just as our love is for him — boundless as the sea.”

    On a brilliant afternoon at Mecox Bay, while one of our friends made lunch, the other offered to take my husband and me for a spin in their Boston Whaler. We three walked barefoot to the end of the dock for a short, unserious outing.

    Feeling like 12-year-olds on the lake at camp, we shed our septuagenarian identities. We were practically singing, we were so happy. For about 15 minutes, we followed a flotilla of swans — equal in elegance to the estates along the bay.

    Soon, the sound of the engine changed. When it stopped, our host tossed an aluminum oar to my husband and said, “Paddle.”

    At the nearest bulkhead, we tied up and went to get help, as if this were a perfectly ordinary and sane thing to do on a Saturday in Water Mill. But wait, it’s no longer precisely Water Mill; it’s part of The Hamptons, a name that obliterates the distinct charm of each village; a name that merges them into a conglomerate.

    The Hamptons, home to celebrities — some of whom are first rate at making themselves well known rather than well known for making themselves first rate.

    The Hamptons, where it’s impossible to find a shoe repair shop. Or, for that matter, any of the ordinary services enjoyed by those who have lived and vacationed here from the end of the colonial era to the beginning of . . . The Hamptons.

    Nevertheless, our friend, a Mecox resident for decades, and my husband and I, who have been local homeowners for 40 years, thinking we were in territory we knew, climbed out of the boat.

    All of us were without wallets or cellphones or shoes. I can see that we might have appeared crazy to anyone who goes down to the sea in ships; but, to us, this was a toy boat in a bathtub.

    We hoisted ourselves onto the bulkhead, amazed that our well-used bones could accomplish this feat and still stand upright. We approached a house with six separate entrances resembling those in a row of town houses. Four sports cars were placed like compass points on a circular driveway. “Oh, good, someone must be home.”

    I suggested we call out, so as not to surprise anyone, especially a dog! “Hello! Hall-ooo-ooo.” Through a screen door, we saw a plush but empty sitting room. We continued to call.

    After 10 minutes, another door opened and a handsome man with white hair, a white mustache, and sky-blue eyes emerged. A dark apron was tied around his slim waist. Its bib protected an expensive blue-and-white-striped shirt with a starched collar. He was the butler, he said, and in just a few minutes, Brian would be coming to help us.

    “Please, we’ve been waiting for a while. Could you call a taxi for us, so we can get some gas and motor off?”

    “No,” he said, “I’m afraid not. You’ll have to wait for Brian.”

    “Our friend’s wife will worry. She expected us back for lunch half an hour ago.”

    “Sorry,” he said. “You can’t leave the premises until security has a chance to check you.”

    Security? We’re neighbors. We told him our names and our host’s address, directly across the cove. We apologized for intruding. We just wanted to fix our problem: no gas.

    “I’m sorry,” he said, quite genuinely. “I truly am, but now you’re here and now you’ll have to do things our way.”

    Another man, sweating in his tie and jacket, raced toward us, demanding, “Who are you and just what are you doing here and how did you get in?”

    We told our story again. On his walkie-talkie, he discussed it with Brian. He hurried us to the end of the driveway, telling the butler to keep us there until he returned. Then, quite abruptly, he jogged off.

    My husband nudged me, patted his hip, and gestured toward the departing jogger. I noticed a bulge. My husband whispered, “Gun!” This rude fellow was packing heat! Was this a movie or my life? Security? I felt extremely insecure.

    The butler assured us that the addled interrogator was only an assistant to Brian. Brian will take care of everything. By now, Brian had become purely mythological. No one, I’m sure, awaited Zeus with more fervor than ours, waiting for Brian.

    In his charming French accent, the butler apologized for his co-worker’s demand that my escorts and I scurry along the gravel in bare feet. Then he added, “You came at the worst possible time. The owner is in residence. You really don’t want to know who he is or where you are. You have no idea what you stepped into.”

    “No, no,” I said. “You’re right. I really don’t want to know. I just want to go home. Please, call us a taxi.”

    “Sorry, I can’t.”

    By now, I was sure my blood pressure was about to blow a hole in one of my veins.

    “Well,” he said, “I don’t care who knows, so I’m going to tell you anyway.” He smiled like a good friend who’s about to tell you something no one else will. “It’s _____ _____’s house,” he said with great pride.

    Then, his cellphone (which he wouldn’t let us use to call a taxi) rang. I leaned against my husband and whispered, “Who is _____ _____? I never heard of him.”

    “Shh,” he said. “Tell you later.”

    “Now!” I commanded. “Right now!”

    “Okay, okay. He’s the C.E.O. of ________. Probably one of the richest men in America. A billionaire many times over.”

    Some people know the statistics for every professional athlete, even gladiators in the Fortune 500 League. Numbers on the big board of Wall Street’s Coliseum are memorized with the same zeal as those on the scoreboard of each major sports stadium.

    At last, Brian! He’s real. He’s smiling. He’s friendly, actually. He said that another thug — or did he say “man” — would take us to the nearest gas station to get the right mix for the boat so we could leave the way we came, and fast! We told him that we needed to go home to get money for gas.

    “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything. We want to help you. We want you to get out of here as soon as possible, before the owner knows you’ve been here. It’s taken us so long because we were already on another surveillance when you arrived. We saw you on our cameras, but we couldn’t come right away.”

    No wonder The Hamptons are referred to as a war zone. In the summer, especially, simultaneous invasions overwhelm the troops.

    The butler called the driver. “Listen, these people are elderly. You’ve got to have some respect. You can’t just keep them here. It’s hot. They’re tired. They don’t have shoes.”

    Elderly! And here I was feeling so athletic, hoisting myself onto the bulkhead!

    The driver appeared and told us to get in the car; it didn’t sound inviting. He gave each of us a bottle of cold water and berated us for being out in a boat without phones or money or ID. As a cop from New York City, out here on a private security gig, he informed us that if we were in New York, he would throw us in jail. “That’s the law!” Like a big brother half our age, he advised us never to be without ID again.

    By this time, I was truly miserable. I felt kidnapped, held against my will in a car. I said I wish I could go home. My husband asked, “Would you please take my wife home, so she doesn’t have to deal with the boat again? Maybe it won’t start up. Maybe it will take a while to resolve things.”

    “Sorry,” said our straight-out-of-“The Godfather” chauffeur, “my instructions are to take you to the gas station and back to your boat. Nowhere else.”

    When we returned to where it is we don’t want to know we are, which belongs to him whose name we also don’t want to know, everyone was smiling and nice to us. “We’re so sorry. You just can’t be too careful these days.”

    They explained that their boss, who has gates and armed guards and cameras and who-knows-what-else, feels vulnerable to an attack by sea.

    We three elders in our baseball caps and bare feet probably met the criterion for his most terrifying fantasy. Meantime, his protectors must have checked our names. Apparently, we did not appear on a list of the most wanted. Nor were we on a roster of Navy Seals.

    The two tough guys filled up the gas tank. They helped us to our seats with the respect and care elderly people like us suddenly appreciated. They started the engine. Like twin James Bonds, they jumped from the boat onto the bulkhead in one smooth motion. They managed to do all the dirty work without mussing their hair or soiling their jackets. They wished us well. Up on land, above us, waving, they almost looked like cadets, saluting us for a job well done.

    “We’ll return with money for the gas!” we promised.

    “No. No. Please.”

    “Go home. Please, don’t bother to come back.”

    These good neighbors, without expecting anything in return, gave us three bottles of cold water and $6.09 worth of gas. Where else in the world could someone receive such treatment?

--

    Fran Castan taught writing and literature at the School of Visual Arts in New York for 25 years. She is the author of "The Widow's Quilt," a book of poems, and "Venice: City That Paints Itself," a collection of her poems and paintings by her husband, Lewis Zacks.

One of the surprises in growing older, at least for me, is that you have trouble recognizing people you’ve known for ages. It’s not that you start forgetting who your friends are — again, at least in my case — but that they no longer look like the person who is lodged in your visual memory. Only after a double take do you realize who it is, and only after the encounter is over does it occur to you to wonder if you have become unrecognizable, too.

    As I drove out of the Reutershan parking lot recently, my attention was drawn to a woman walking along who looked vaguely familiar.

    OMG! I belatedly realized she was someone I’ve known pretty well for 30 years or so but who looked so different all of a sudden that she was nearly unrecognizable — older, wider, and with an entirely new hair color. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but that didn’t seem a sufficient excuse for not knowing her. Of course, our bodily shapes tend to change as we age, and our facial muscles are apt to sag, but should these superficial factors negate other physical characteristics? Aren’t our eyes, and noses, and bone structure (not to mention our style of dressing) enough?

    For me at least, recognition, or lack thereof, has a lot to do with the color and length of someone’s hair. This particular friend had deep, dark waist-length tresses when I first met her . . . and, suddenly, there she was on the sidewalk in front of Scoop du Jour, her whole mane white. Obviously, I had blanked out the gradual change in her appearance — gray slowing etching lines in the black — that had transpired over the intermediary years or even decades. Either I wasn’t paying attention or my visual memory refused to face reality.

    On the other hand, I’ve got a friend, a bona fide nonagenarian, whom I would know anywhere. She’s looked pretty much the same or as long as I’ve known her, which, in this case, is upward of 40 years. She admits to having had a little facial work many long years ago, but I doubt that it would have come with a permanent guarantee. If she’s got a secret, she isn’t telling what it is, leaving me to think she’s the exception that proves the rule.

    So, can we make a deal? If in the near future we run into each other, and if, at first, you don’t recognize me, don’t worry about it. The problem is probably mutual.

    Having taken a peek at Geoff Gehman’s memoir before it went to press, before it went to print last week, I ran through the office saying I had been canonized.

    But, as Geoff later correctly said in an e-mail, in order to be canonized you’ve got to be dead.

    Damn. There’s no way we can get around it? Oh well, I’ll demur then when it comes to sanctification. Though it is nice to know that I once led a younger reader to think that you could have fun in relating facts, or at least in relating alleged facts. I do remember in recounting the theft at Truman Capote’s that I’d been dismayed by all the “allegedlys” Ev Rattray stuck in. They kind of broke up the rhythm, but they were necessary, I suppose, to fend off any claims that we might have been having too much fun.

    As for fun, a photographer from one of the big city dailies, who saw how enthusiastically I was covering Norman Mailer’s “Maidstone,” recommended that I eschew visions of journalistic grandeur in favor of having fun out here.

    And so I did, and not to my regret, though I had to be saved from fun three times — by Barbara Johnson, who took me in as a star boarder following a divorce, by Ev Rattray, who changed my beat from bored meetings to sports (what I call the joy department), and by Mary, who has said I’m the first man who waved to her in East Hampton.

    I remember when that was. I was running down Abraham’s Path one morning, by the softball field, when I saw her driving up the street. She waved back. Lucky me.

    That was some 27 years ago, and though she, a single mother then, put me off for a while, not wanting to risk loving again, I clung to my own invincible surmise and, in time, we leaped feet first into the unknown in the Quaker cemetery on Shelter Island as the twins, who had partaken of M&M wafers, grinned and said, chocolate at the edges of their mouths, “Kiss the bride.”

    That was on the first Sunday of March, 1985, and though we were formally married by the late Sheppard Frood in our backyard five months later, on Aug. 22, we agree that we plighted our troth when we married ourselves.

    I still wave to her when I set off in the morning and she’s at the window in the computer room. And she waves back.

    Lucky me.

    I had to go to the post office two Tuesdays ago to get the mail for the office. Russell Bennett usually goes but had no car, so I offered. I opened our box, extracted all of the mail, and was headed to the mail counter to pay for some postage-due receipts. The gentleman who was also headed to the counter held the door open for me. It was Eli Wallach!

    I said, “Thank you very much,” and then stood in line behind him. He was dressed impeccably and was carrying a cane, although he didn’t seem to need it. I leaned over to him and said that I had seen him in a reading at Guild Hall last year or the year before, and how much I had enjoyed it. He told me that he was doing another one on Aug. 5, reading excerpts from a play by his good friend Tennessee Williams.

    I said that I was going to go back to the office to see if I could still get some tickets, then proceeded to tell him how much I enjoyed him in the movie “The Holiday,” with Kate Winslet. And he told me that she was getting divorced.

    The line at the post office was not moving, no one at all at any of the three counters, but I didn’t care, I was talking with Eli Wallach! I only had to pay for some postage dues, which I would not normally have waited to pay for that day, as the line was at a standstill, but it is not every day that Eli Wallach is in front of you at the post office.

    He told me that he was 95, has been married to Anne Jackson for 64 years and that they have three children. He also told me that he had been in Tennessee Williams’s plays “Camino Real” and “The Rose Tattoo” and that he is currently in two movies that are still in theaters, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and “The Ghost Writer.”

    As the line started moving forward, the women behind me started to get involved in our conversation, each choosing their favorite movies and plays that he had been in. He responded to everyone with funny comments and anecdotes about his co-stars and directors. Sadly, he reached the counter with the gentleman who accompanied him.

    I took care of my postal business and we both left the post office at the same time, as he held the door for me again on our way out. All the women were waving and saying, “Goodbye, Eli!” I had a grin on my face all the way back to the office. What a great trip to the post office, the best ever. I immediately e-mailed Barbara-Jo Howard at Guild Hall to ask if there were still any tickets to the show on Friday. She e-mailed me back to say that there would be two tickets with my name on them at the box office. How exciting!

    I called my friend Rori, who is an actress and a theater person; we made plans to go, and that Friday found ourselves watching a great reading. The cast — Mercedes Ruehl, Justine Lupe, Vincent Piazza, and Harris Yulin — was amazing, and they saved the best for last — Eli!

    It was a wonderful tribute to his good friend Tennessee Williams, who would have turned 100 on March 26. Needless to say, Mr. Wallach received a standing ovation. Everyone loves Eli! And, by the way, he will also be at Guild Hall on Aug. 27 at 8 p.m. for the Night of Stars celebrating Guild Hall’s 80th birthday. I’m not going to miss it!

—

    Jane Bimson is an advertising representative for The Star.

    “Welcome. You have reached the customer assistance center for National Grid. . . . The estimated wait time to speak to a representative is 10 minutes or less. . . . At the end of this call, your representative may ask you to provide the answers to two short questions about the service we provided you.”

    Seven minutes, 15 seconds later:

    “Can I have your account number?”

    “I don’t have my account number with me. I’m returning your call.”

    “Without your account number, I cannot talk to you about your account.”

    “You just called me, left a message, asked me to call you back.”

    “Without your account number . . .”

    “I know my name. I know my address. I know my mother’s maiden name.”

    “We have security issues.”

    “I know the name of my first teacher. And the first girl I kissed. They aren’t the same person, by the way.”

    “I’m glad to hear that, but that doesn’t get me into your account.”

    “Can I ask about payments in general? Not about my payment.”

    “Sure.”

    “How much does it cost to pay a bill with a credit card?”

    “The fee is $2.25 for first $600 or less. And an additional $2.25 for anything over $600.01.”

    “So a thousand-dollar bill — just hypothetically, not my bill — would cost an additional $4.50?”

    “Yes.”

    “Can I pay my bill now?”

    “No.”

    “Why?”

    “You don’t have your account number.”

    “But I’m paying the bill, giving you money, giving you my credit card number. How can you lose? I’m taking all the chances.”

    “I cannot do that. Do you have any other questions?”

    “Yes. Why do you charge $4.50 for paying a bill on time?”

    “Because you are using a credit card.”

    “I just paid six other bills with a credit card and no one else charged a fee.”

    “If you pay by check, there’s no fee.”

    “Doesn’t it cost everybody more if I write a check and mail it to you and someone has to deliver it and you have to open the envelope and sort it and deposit the check into your account? Isn’t a credit card faster and cheaper and greener for all of us?”

    “We don’t make the rules. Western Union does.”

    “Western Union? They still in business?”

    “They are in the third-party business.”

    “Third party? I missed the first two.”

    “They take care of our credit card payments.”

    “Western Union?”

    “Yes, they handle all the credit card payments for National Grid.”

    “Why does a utility have a third-party payment system?”

    “National Grid is not a utility.”

    “It’s not?”

    “You are confusing us with LIPA.”

    “I am?”

    “We have the same phone number.”

    “You do?”

    “I could look up your LIPA account as well as your National Grid — if you had your account number.”

    “You could?”

    “Do you have your LIPA account number?”

    “Maybe. I just walked into the restaurant and I am looking through my bills.”

    “Restaurant? What restaurant?”

    “My restaurant. The restaurant that owes you the money.”

    “You have a commercial account?”

    “Yes.”

    “Why didn’t you say that?”

    “I didn’t know it made a difference.”

    “If you had said it was a commercial account, the fee system is different.”

    “Really? Credit card payments for commercial accounts cost more to process than for residential accounts?”

    “We don’t make the rules.”

    “I know. Western Union does.”

    “I am looking up fees for commercial accounts. Hold, please.”

    I listen to a piano figure repeat for 3 minutes, 35 seconds. It is hypnotic. Good thing I am not driving.

    “Hello?”

    “Yes, I am still here. I liked the music.”

    “For payment with credit card for a commercial account, the fee is $7.95 for the first $1,000 and $50 for anything over $1000.01 up to $2,500.”

    “Really?”

    “Yes sir.”

    “Fifty dollars?”

    “That’s right.”

    “It’s not late or anything.”

    “A late fee would make it more.”

    “What if the bill is over $2,500?”

    “For anything between $2,500.01 and $5,000, that fee would be $225.”

    “Really? $225? That’s almost a 10-percent surcharge. Doesn’t it take the same time and energy to receive $1,000 as it does $2,000?”

    “We don’t make the rules, sir . . .”

    “I know. Western Union.”

    “And to pay a bill between $10,000.01 and $20,000, the fee is $425.”

    “That’s awfully steep for paying a utility bill.”

    “I told you, National Grid is not a utility.”

    “Right. I forgot. It’s a private company.”

    “I think it’s a public company.”

    “So I can invest in National Grid?”

    “I believe so.”

    “On the New York Stock Exchange?”

    “I don’t think so. It’s in England.”

    “Wait. National Grid is English?”

    “Not exactly English. National Grid is a multinational corporation with headquarters in England.”

    “Kind of a misleading name, wouldn’t you say?”

    “I wouldn’t say.”

    “Is LIPA an American outfit?”

    “I can transfer you to the Long Island Power Authority.”

    “Great. Thank you.”

    “Hold on, please.”

    There are no short questions about the service that was provided. I listen to piano music for 2 minutes, 45 seconds.

    “LIPA. How can I help you?”

    “Hello, LIPA. Are you an American company?”

    “Yes we are.”

    “Are you a utility?”

    “Yes we are.”

    “The same utility that overcharged their customers $231 million and caused the New York State Senate to demand an oversight committee overnight?”

    “How can I assist you?”

    “I’d like to pay my bloated bill.”

    “I need your account number before we can go any further.”

    “Uh-oh . . .”

    Bruce Buschel is a writer of nonfiction and an Off Broadway musical. He blogs for The New York Times about his restaurant in Bridgehampton, Southfork Kitchen. He has also directed and produced a series of jazz films, “Live at the Village Vanguard.”

    When the thought crossed my mind well before my family headed out to the Sag Harbor carnival last week to get a fishbowl ready, I should have acted on the impulse. Instead, we returned with a bag of three goldfish from one of the games of chance and had no place to put them.

    Chlorine-laced water from the tap does not really make a hospitable home for even this hardy breed. It was lucky, I suppose, that I had a small, unused tank and a bottle of water treatment from the pet store tucked away. So, before I went to bed, I set up what would be the fishes’ new habitat. Unfortunately, Evvy, who is 7, named each scaly new friend before she turned in.

    I fell asleep with the fish still in their plastic bag, though I had opened the top and clipped the bag to the side of the tank. In the morning there were but two. Actually, there were still three, but one was no longer moving. Into the trash it went. Evvy, used to fish mortality by this point, asked what had happened to Snoopy, or whatever its name had been, but was less upset than I had imagined she would be.

    At the carnival, kids and parents crowded around the goldfish game. The harried, ice-eyed guy who ran the booth looked ready to crack at any moment. He sold baskets of Ping-Pong balls for $5, which were to be tossed toward a low table covered with small-mouthed fishbowls.

    Winners took home fish in bags of two or three; there were plastic tanks available for a couple of dollars, and fish food. I wondered how many of the fish would survive until the next day.

    The odds are not good for carnival fish. We have seen them lost under a car seat never to be heard from again. Some, like Evvy’s short-kept Snoopy, perish quickly. Others, like the one that lived for several years and whose name I forget, are found on a bedroom floor and returned to their tank, but they never recover.

    Now, several days later, Evvy’s two remaining fish from the recent winnings seem to be doing well enough. Lisa, her mother, wants them moved from their spot near the cappuccino maker, however, something I will need to attend to. Time will tell how they do long term. If they don’t make it, there’s always next year’s basket of balls to be thrown.

    On entering the office one recent deadline morning, I was told that the electricity had gone out and would be out for the next six hours.

    Since I had one more story to write, not of much moment, but nevertheless a story that needed to be done to fill out the page, I thought, for the first time in a very long time, of manual typewriters and how they would — for me at any rate, because I don’t have a laptop — save the day.

    We have a few of them downstairs, all of which I’ve probably used at one time or another, but I quickly learned that they were hopelessly gummed up, and before I could properly mourn their loss, concluded that I would have to go home and work on Mary’s laptop.

    I hate computers, if the truth be known. I never feel at ease with them. At least with typewriters you knew where you stood and where what you’d written was, right there on the page. What I’ve written on this screen thus far looks palpable enough, but it’s a deception. A thundercrack or power surge and I’d be cursing the dark again, agonizing over the fact that I had not yet hit “save.”

    I have just done so, but I’m still not reassured.

    At any rate, I went home to our new computer. The old one had drowned a few weeks before, having fallen victim to an open window and a vigorously oscillating sprinkler. Nothing could be done, though our editor, who is very much at home in this technological age, did his best, for which I genuinely thanked him.

    Before leaving to work at home, I asked for the address to send the story to and was given [email protected].

    Not wanting to bother Mary, who was at her mother’s and who is very computer literate, with any importunings, I wrote the story as an e-mail, and when I was done the better part of an hour later I hit “send” and quickly picked up the phone.

    “Did you get it, Kathy — I just sent it.”

    No, Kathy said after checking, they hadn’t gotten it. Sometimes it took a while. She suggested I try another address, [email protected], and then went back to work. (The electricity had been restored to the back shop early on, a line having been run over from the library.)

    As soon as I began to type in the new address I knew I’d done something horribly wrong. I went posthaste to the “sent” box, the one with the paper plane at the left of the screen, hoping against hope. . . . The story wasn’t there!

    Mary said she’d be right over. Frankly, I moaned, I doubted that even she would ever find it. And I’d been working the better part of an hour!

    But she did! In some unexpected place, after clicking on everything there was to click on. “Don’t ask me how I did it,” she said as she began to print out a copy, which I tugged from the machine as if I were performing a forceps delivery.

    She also, bless her, sent what I’d written to the second address given, and off I went to the office, relieved but seriously shaken.

    Later, I was told that the e-mail I’d originally sent did, in fact, arrive, but well after the one Mary had sent.

    Where, then, had it been?!

    It would have been a good question to raise at the computer class I’d signed up for that afternoon, but which, because of all of the above, I’d missed.

    Another day and I am not yet saved.