I’m a bit old fashioned, I suppose, so when I moved to the big city I wanted a land line telephone. Don and I both have cell phones but the new cable/internet provider we chose to use offered us a plan that included a land line with unlimited long distance. We don’t use it all that often but we’ve sure gotten a lot of interesting messages and to date, none of them have been for us!
For a while, every time I checked the messages, they were for Evelyn. Apparently her lawyer’s office was trying to get a hold of her and for some reason they kept calling our number. I don’t check the messages everyday and I probably should but the day I finally did, there were at least four messages and each revealed a rather desperate attempt to reach Evelyn. I decided I should probably call the people leaving the messages and let them know they had the wrong number for their client and that is why she wasn’t calling them back. I learned several interesting things when calling a “call back” number when you aren’t Evelyn. For starters, they have a rather unfriendly tone. It sort of sounds like the tone you would expect to hear if you had just told them you were calling from the auditing department at the IRS. It’s rather evasive but they keep listening to you even though they don’t want to believe you because believing you would determine they had made a mistake. Eventually they thank you and with the same puzzled sounding voice used for all of their responses, they hang up the phone and sit at their desk for a minute trying to decide what to do next.
I am happy to report the calls for Evelyn finally stopped but today Don said, “Bev, do you realize there are 8 messages on the phone? You should go through them and get at least some of them deleted.” I asked him why he didn’t just delete them and he said, “None of them are for me.” I followed that comment with a rather confident, “Well, I’m betting none of them are for me either.”
What happened next would reveal we were both correct. Five of the eight messages stored on our phone were from Mary in California and she was planning a trip to ND and was wondering if her dear old friend Arlene would mind if she stayed for a few days. Like I said before, I don’t listen to these messages every day so by the time phone messages number 4 and 5 had arrived, Mary was ready to end the friendship to good old Arlene and tell Arlene to take a flying leap to H-E-double toothpick!
Don heard the messages too and we both decided we better give Mary a call. The fate of her friendship with Arlene was at stake!
I dialed the number and after 3 short rings Mary was on the other end. I said, “Hello Mary. My name is Beverly and I just wanted to let you know that the number you’ve been calling in an attempt to reach Arlene was in fact, the wrong number.” She had that same unfriendly tone and her first question was, “Who is this?” I explained again that she had the wrong number for good old Arlene and then after a brief pause she burst into laughter and said, “Now that’s good old ND for ya! I miss ND! I’m coming for a visit soon and I realized I had the wrong number for Arlene and I was able to get in contact with her.” She sounded like a wonderful woman and she has our number so if she gets bored while she’s here maybe she’ll decide to give us a call!
These situations made me think about the Christmas card I sent to the wrong Neil and Julie this past season. The Neil and Julie we know are Don’s cousins and I didn’t have their address but I knew what city they lived in, or so I thought, so I just Googled it and about a month after sending the card we got it back along with a wonderful letter and picture of the family that received it. They scratched and scratched and scratched their heads but neither of them could place us! I plan to write back to them and let them know that they really don’t know us so that they can finally have a bit of closure from their mystery Christmas card. I wonder if they know Evelyn or Arlene. I might mention those names in the letter just for fun!