When I recently tried to make a phone call from home, I was greeted with loud static in place of a dial tone. Trust me on this: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had a better connection than I did.

So, as I have done on WAY too many occasions, I drove to the home of neighbors Bill and Sharon and used their phone to notify the phone company that ours was not working.

A burst of recorded music alerted me that I was connected to the dreaded automated voice system, a device so frustrating to use that I believe its invention should be a capital offense.

I dutifully followed the lengthy computerized instructions and after pushing every button on the phone at least twice, including No. 1, which affirmed that I did not have a dial tone and couldn’t make or receive calls the recorded voice informed me that I could report the problem online.

Well, sure I could if only the modem could get a dial tone. Duh!

It made me think of all the results of brainfade we encounter in our daily lives that make us wonder: “What WERE they thinking?”

A perfect example is checking the lighted menu at a drive-through restaurant and reading that “Braille menus are available. Inquire inside.”

How many times have you connected to your PC to be greeted by the warning: “No keyboard detected. Press any key.”

While shopping, have you ever picked up a box of cereal or bag of snacks that promoted a contest, assured you that no purchase was necessary and then advised you that the details were INSIDE the package? I don’t know about your grocer, but mine would frown on me checking inside the package without buying it.

And it’s not just faceless corporate bureaucrats that commit these WWTT? brainfades. People like you and I are capable of coming up with some real lulus of our own.

I remember a woman vociferously complaining on the radio about daylight-saving time. Seems she thought the extra hour of daylight would be bad for her roses.

Another woman was followed by a police officer for several blocks after he noticed that when she signaled a right turn, she turned left and when she signaled a left turn, she turned right. When he used his lights and siren to bring her to a stop, she readily explained what she was thinking: “I thought I was supposed to use my turn signals to show you which way YOU should go.”

And what about the man who wanted the county to take down the Deer Xing sign near his home because too many deer were using it to cross the road? Just his luck, I guess, to have deer that could read signs.

I’m convinced that husband Ray and I weren’t thinking at all when we decided to buy son Greg a 6-foot Burmese python during his junior high years. My friend Darlene won’t let me forget my pre-Christmas comment to her: “You know, I don’t believe I’m thinking beyond the moment that Greg sees his present and says, ‘Oh, WOW! A SNAKE!'”

I certainly wasn’t thinking that Asclepius would eventually attain a length of 14 feet while relaxing on his heating pad in our guest bedroom. Neither did I consider that he’d consume huge white rats, which Greg stored in the freezer and thawed on the Ping-Pong table after I declared the microwave off-limits.

Ray and I also weren’t thinking when we bought son Ray Jr. a motorcycle when he was a teen-ager. Sure, it was a small motorcycle, but it was still big enough to almost kill me when I inadvertently pulled a wheelie and turned it over on top of me.

But even that wasn’t my worst WWTT? brainfade. That honor goes back 14 years when Kansas University brought in a nearly unknown Dean Smith assistant from North Carolina to coach men’s basketball. When I was stopped on the street by a TV reporter who announced the selection and asked me to comment on it, I exclaimed, “Oh, darn! I was hoping for Charlie Spoonhour.”

My comment never aired because, as I later learned, only my friend Jon and I of all those interviewed knew what the reporter was talking about. I still admire former Southwest Missouri Coach Spoonhour and wish him the best at UNLV. But trade him for Roy Williams? What was I thinking? Easy one-word answer: NOT!

Marsha Henry Goff is a free-lance writer in Lawrence. Her e-mail address is mhgink@netscape.net.