Sep 04 2009
Hello, goodbye
For the past few weeks or so, I’ve had a number of people calling the house looking for someone who isn’t there. It always happen to be a wrong number. For some reason, our home phone number must be one digit away from a popular destination.
The person on the other end of the receiver at first sounds warm and inviting as they search for and seek to speak to an old friend or flame, perhaps. When I tell them the resident in question doesn’t live here, and I’ve never heard of them, they sound flustered. The meager malaise of disappointment settle sin. Sometime sthey resemble the stages of grief; they react in disbelief, either not hearing or comprehending me or just flat-out refusing to accept it and demanding the person in question come to the phone right this instant.
Alas, our little chat ends and they hang up, apologizing. Some just slam the phone down. Often times I feel a weird sort of kinship strike up. “No,” I want to say, “Kevin Windschemidt doesn’t live here, but I do. Would you like to chat?” Inevitably, such attempts at connection are met with dismay. How could they? After all, it is me that they called.
Come on in, stranger, I’d like to comfort them. I won’t bite. I was not in the middle of filing my tax returns or brewing up some chemical concotion that will cure cancer. I have no immediate and important matters to attend to. In fact, I was just in the middle of television viewing and a lights snack when he ringtone signaled you were on a mission to get to this destination.
I always say bye as our dialogue draws to an end. They never do. I figure it’s just a part of common courtesy and etiquette. I wonder if we’ll ever end up getting into a long and drawn-out conversation? Perhaps we’ll end up becoming acquaintenes and then when they dial me, it won’t be a wrong number, but the right one.
