January 30, 2008

Wrong Numbers


I never cease to be amused at the randomness of life. As a child, I was amused with the fact that our home phone number was only a few digits off from both a bank and a pizza place. This led to many awkward and confusing conversations with strangers that I have only come to appreciate later in life.

Recently, while walking my dog in the blistering cold, I felt my phone vibrate, indicating that a message is awaiting my response. Expecting to see a message from one of my admirers, I was instead confronted with a text from an anonymous number. The following is the conversation:

"Your mom just won a hot dog cooker at the company party!"

Confused and suspecting a nerdy 'mom' joke, I replied, "Um... who is this?"

"Well, who is this?" came the reply.

"This is Staci."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have got the wrong number from my friend."

"It's ok, although my mom will be disappointed."

"Didn't mean to bring her hopes up."

"I think she'll be ok."

"Glad to hear it, have a good night."

"You too."

I will probably never know who my anonymous texter was but I'm still pretty sure someone owes someone a hot dog cooker.

3 comments:

oof said...

I'll bet dad would have liked the hot dog cooker!

Sanshi said...

I get two calls a night from some an Indian dude overseas trying to talk to his mommy. I've told this guy several times he's got the wrong number, but every night I get two calls from him....

Anonymous said...

About 6 months ago, I started receiving calls on my cell phone from a number I did not recognize. When I would answer, the person would say nothing. I could hear background noise, but despite my repeated "Hello...Hello?" and sometimes even "WHAT?!?" I got nothin'. After about 3 calls, I quit answering and let it go to my voicemail. The first couple of times, no message was left, but after that...holy crap. This creep would leave the strangest messages. I would have to listen to them repeatedly, with no success in deciphering what the freak was actually saying. He was speaking English (I think...), but putting random words together that made absolutely no sense. One message that I can remember went something like this "Bead their broken bride me." Uhhhhh... I wish I could remember some of the others...actually, no. I changed my mind. I am glad I don't remember because they were creepy. I got sick of it, looked up the number on-line and discovered it was a landline in Colorado. I don't know anyone in Colorado. I tried calling the number several times, but no one ever answered. After a few more calls and strange messages, I called my cell phone company to inquire if I could get the number blocked. Of course I got some idiot who thought I wanted to change my phone number, so that didn't work out. I received a couple more messages, then it stopped. I got a call from another Colorado number a few weeks later. It was a missionary zone leader in Colorado. Apparently, a guy I dated in high school had my cell phone number written down somewhere and his crazy companion got ahold of it and was the one making the strange calls. Why? I don't know if I will ever know. He got caught and from what the zone leader said, was "dealt with accordingly."