A Victim of Circumstances
A few years ago I went away for a long weekend. When I got home there were
about a dozen messages on my answering machine. They had several things in
common, these messages:
- They were all from foreigners.
- These foreigners were all telling me they were new in town.
- I had no idea why they felt I should know about this.
- Okay, some of the calls were from people who were not foreigners but they
were new in town nevertheless. And
some of the calls were from local residents who were telling me that someone
else had just moved to town, as if I would care.
Over the next few days I continued to get many such messages, but none
of the calls came in while I was home. I had surmised that they had mistaken
my number for that of the Welcome Wagon, but I had no idea how this had come
to pass nor what I could do about it.
Then a call came in when I was home to answer the phone. The caller told
me that she had gotten the number from a magazine put out by the Bob Jones
University radio station, WMUU ("World's Most Unusual University"). I
called WMUU. They confirmed that there had been a typo in the Welcome Wagon
ad in their monthly magazine and they were suitably mortified. They
broadcast an announcement to correct the error, and the calls finally
stopped coming in.
At that same phone number I got a series of calls for a man named Mike
who was evidently in the insurance bidness. The caller was clueless
yet persistent enough
that getting an answering machine during office hours did not seem unusual to
him even though this answering machine did not announce that it belonged to
Mike. I finally put the caveat "If you're looking for Mike you've got the
wrong number" on the outgoing message. This took care of the problem but gave
me a new one: My friends started leaving messages that said "who the hell is
Mike?"
Also at that number I got a few calls from a woman who mistook it
for her doctor's office number. The best of those was when she called from
the hospital, barely able to talk, seeking an appointment to get the stitches
taken out of her tongue.
The best is yet to come:
But the king of the wrong number calls came after I'd moved and gotten a
new number. This little old lady called and said she was looking for "Minnie
Gamble." I told her she had the wrong number and hung up. A few minutes later
the phone rang again. "I'm calling for Minnie Gamble and I know this is the
number because it's written in my Bible!"
Even when I know with the certainty of the recipient of a wrong
number call that I am right, I am reluctant to argue with the Bible. So
I asked her to read the number to me. It was 1 digit off from mine. I
said "that is not this number." Not knowing she'd misdialed, she said
"it is too." I said "If you had in fact dialed that number my phone
would not have rung."
Just as she started to reply I said to myself "Hey, I don't have to
argue with her" and hung up the phone. It rang again in about the time
it takes to press "redial" and I let the machine get it. I never heard
from her again.
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Last updated: Saturday, 14-May-2005 17:00:46 EDT