From Journalism 2252: Writing Humor with Diane Bones.

NOTE: This is fictional. I do not have a Great Aunt Sue. But the University of Phoneix Online survey is true.

You know that lady with the soothing voice on the other end of the phone who took the job of millions of human telephone operators worldwide by means of a single audio recording? I don’t like her.

I realized this as she told me my phone call could not be completed as dialed. Beatrice – that’s what I like to call her out of my love for Bea Arthur – told me I could stay on the line to speak with an operator, but I hung up. Talking to operators is so 64 years ago.

You see, I was trying to get in touch with my Great Aunt Sue. She had recently sent me a check for $3,000 to cover my rent, car insurance bill and overdue Blockbuster fines – that “No More Late Fees” gimmick is totally overrated.

Great Aunt Sue never does anything out of the goodness of her heart. Don’t get me wrong, that sweet old cupcake will do you a favor – as long as she knows she’ll get something in return. Apparently, she was a frequent guest at the White House during the Coolidge years, but that topic doesn’t typically come up at family dinners.

So that’s why I wanted to thank her, but Beatrice said I couldn’t. With her gentle, condescending voice, Beatrice was forcing me to visit Great Aunt Sue face to face.

Great Aunt Sue doesn’t keep anyone updated on her whereabouts. For all we know, she could be dead. Although, we said the same thing three years ago at the family reunion as she ate cake right in front of us. You never really can tell with her – kind of like Peter O’Toole.

Now, Great Aunt Sue generally doesn’t like visitors who don’t bring gifts, so I decided to bake a batch of my mom’s famous chocolate chip cookies, the ones with the top-secret recipe. When I asked her for it, mom told me to look on the back of the chocolate chips bag. Part of me died that day.

The next morning, I tracked down Great Aunt Sue’s address through the use of a GPS device, a phone book and a game of eenie-meenie-miney-moe. It was off to Lubbock, Texas – the fried Oreo capital of the world.

You need to understand that Great Aunt Sue isn’t the most pleasant of creatures. I mean, she’d be the person to tell the folks at Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that she hates the house hundreds of volunteers slaved over in a week. It’d been nearly seven years since I last saw her, and she almost slammed the door in my face until she realized I was carrying cookies.

Small talk ensued after that. “How’s your health, Aunt Sue? How’s Cousin Gertrude nowadays? I hear she married Cousin Theodore. Have you seen anyone about that mole?”

Without those cookies, I’d have been out on my patootie. When she left to realign her dentures, I began to hear sounds coming from the wood floors below me. It was like a scene out of the movie Clue – although a recent study by the University of Phoenix Online suggests 97.3 percent of the world population hasn’t seen the movie, so this might be a lost comparison.

After investigating, I found the cause. Tied to a chair with a cloth in her mouth was a middle-aged woman. I couldn’t believe it. My Great Aunt Sue, the loving, kind and pretentious old hag that she was, actually held a fellow human hostage. And when she spoke, I nearly pulled a Marie Osmond after a dance routine.

Don’t you know it was Beatrice? I confronted Great Aunt Sue, who explained she ran into Beatrice in the canned food aisle at the supermarket. Aunt Sue lured Beatrice with a bottle of Robitussin, and one thing led to another. Turns out that Beatrice ended up being Great Aunt Sue’s live answering machine. All this time, Beatrice was just Great Aunt Sue’s puppet.

The good news is that Beatrice gets paid by the phone call, and her location allows for some freelance voiceover work, too. You know those commercials for Aveeno Daily Moisturizing Lotion? Yep, that’s Beatrice.

But I still don’t like the woman for being so deceitful. This was just one realization I had while visiting Great Aunt Sue, in addition to discovering Peter O’Toole might still be alive and developing plans to create a Clue fan club.

And if we’re being honest, it makes no difference to me. Beatrice may have that unmistakable voice, but she doesn’t even compare to the hotties on The Golden Girls.