Article published October 16, 2013 (#-523)

Don’t call the Old Coot!

By Merlin Lessler

I love wrong numbers. I had one the other night, "Hello,” I said, wondering why I’d bothered to answer, thinking it was probably a telemarketer. I expected to hear,  “It’s your last chance to protect your credit rating; you must act today to take advantage of our one time offer!” – or- “We need your help. Won’t you please make a donation to the Clam and Oyster Foundation?” But, it wasn’t. All I heard was a muffled, “Grmph-butch-is-at ooh?” I was relieved. I told the mumbler he had the wrong number. “I’m tho thorry,” he replied. He didn’t need to apologize; I was thrilled; I love it when it’s a wrong number. I can get off the phone in a flash. With a right number, I have to listen, and sometimes even talk, turn down a request to do something or worse, agree to it. Even with a telemarketer, I have to listen long enough to figure out if I should hang up, make a wisecrack or lie - “Sorry! My wife just set her hair on fire taking the roast out of the oven!” And, hang up chuckling to myself. It makes me wonder why Alexander Graham Bell worked so tirelessly to invent such an inconvenient device. One that has been rudely intruding into people’s lives for over a century. (He took credit for it anyhow; it was really invented by a little-known Italian mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, 16 years before Bell patented it in the US.).

 But, I answered the phone the other night. I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs; I hear the bell and my arm shoots out and picks up the receiver even though my mind says, “NO!” So there I am, more often than not, saying hello with dread and trepidation. I hate talking on the phone, even in the best of circumstances. Most old coots do. We have a hard time conversing when we can’t look someone in the eye.  Too much missing information, we can’t see the caller, and even worse, the caller can’t see us roll our eyes as they go on and on. They don’t get the message to SHUT UP!  

It’s why old coots have shifted to text messaging, those of us who have learned to use a miniature keyboard that is. It’s true, we don’t get to read the body language that we’d get in a person-to-person exchange, but even so, texting has a critical advantage over live phone conversations. You can delay your response and be less likely to: #1 - prove how stupid you are, #2 - avoid agreeing to something you will come to dread or, #3 - be required to put on an Oscar winning performance and respond to the caller with, “I-a donna speak-a da-Anglish,” which works Ok with a telemarketer, but not very well with a relative asking to borrow the ladder.

Wrong numbers are truly underrated. They’re just the thing for me. Call and ask for someone who doesn’t live here and I’ll give you a listen. (I’ve got nothing to lose.) Call and ask for me and you’ll get the “hair on fire” routine. Have a problem with that? Don’t call; send your complaint to mlessler7@gmail.com. I’ll add it to the pile.