I had a work colleague who refused to answer her cell phone unless she knew exactly who was calling her.
“I don’t recognize this number,” she would say aloud. “I wonder who it is.”
After she said this three or four times about incoming calls in a 10minute span, never answering, I piped up.
“You know how I find out who a person is that calls me?”
“No. How?” “I answer the call,” I responded. “That usually solves the mystery.”
Usually. Me: “Hello.” Caller: “Hey, what’s goin’ on? Me: (Not sure who it is) “Uh, nothing. What’s up with you?”
Caller: “Nothing really. How’s everything going?”
Me: (The voice sounds familiar. It’s a male with a Southern accent. That narrows it down to half the people I know.) “It’s going fine.”
Caller: “What are y’all up to?” Me: (Still no clue) “Oh, nothing. Just hanging around.”
Caller: “Is it driving you crazy, not having any college football or basketball to watch?”
Me: (Aha! A clue. He’s a sports fan. And he knows I am too. That narrows it down to, well, about 75 percent of the men I know). “I haven’t gone crazy yet. Happened to catch some of the Georgia/ Florida replay from last year over the weekend. Who were you pulling for in that game? (a crafty way to narrow down who this is according to his fandom).
Caller: (After a loud, obnoxious laugh) “Aww, you know who I was pulling for.”
Me: (No, I don’t.) “Oh, yeah.” (Well said, dummy.)
Caller: “Well, anyway, the reason I’m calling (Yeah! Finally) is I’ve lost the paperwork on that thing, and I need to get the price because our physical year ends June 30.”
Me: “You mean your fiscal year?”
Caller: (Sort of defensively) “No, I’m talking about our physical year. You don’t know anything about the way we do business.
Me: (Now I’m getting miffed. Not only is this person so arrogant that he thinks his voice is instantly recognizable, but he’s also apparently a bonehead – which narrows it down to about 90 percent of the men I know. I’ll set him straight.) “There’s really no such thing as a physical year. The actual year goes from January 1 until December 31, and fiscal years are used for business or financial purposes and can go from any month to any month.” (Trying to get back to the topic of finding out just who I’m talking to.) “But that’s not really germane to what we’re talking about. What is this paperwork for?”
Caller: “What do the Germans have to do with our physical year?”
Me: (Not caring anymore. I tap the phone on a table to create a ‘click’ sound.) “Oh, listen, I’m sorry. I’ve got another call coming in. Probably somebody offering me free money, or Rickey Smiley, so I have to take it. I’ll talk to you about this later. Oh, by the way, I saw your mother the other day.”
Caller: “What? Wait. I need to know–” Me: (Interrupting) “That guy she was with wasn’t your father, though. Gotta go. Bye.”
Caller: “Huh?”
• Len Robbins is the editor of The Clinch County News. He can be reached at lrobbins@ clinchcounty news
