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Friday, January 07, 2005

an exercise in telephone patience

Update on the asterisk situation: I heard from T at ten this morning. They had reached the equipment without incident after only an hour on the snowmobiles, and were waiting for batteries to charge before heading back to their truck to drive down the hill. Now I feel like I need to tell God I'm sorry for thinking swear words and having a world-class bad attitude, before I can tell Him a big THANK YOU for getting T safely this far.

I finally gave up waiting to hear from T again and got in the shower.
Which meant, of course, that it was time for the phone to start ringing, and of course I had to answer it every time because what if it was T?.

• Call #1: C brings me the cordless, saying that it's ringing but she's "too shy to answer it." I turn off the water and push TALK, getting the phone all wet, and get a dial tone. I dry off the phone and set it on the toilet lid so that if it rings again I can just answer it, in case it's T.
• Call #2: Phone rings. I turn off water, swipe hand against
  towel, pick up phone, getting it all wet, push TALK.
  

  Computerized female
  Prozac voice: "This is the
  TeleCirc library system. You have (ONE) item being held at this time..."

• Call #3: Phone rings. I turn off water, swipe hand on
  towel, pick up phone, push TALK.
  

  Accented
  female voice: Good morning, may I speak to [gross mispronunciation of T's name, which, granted, happens a lot]?
  I: He's not here; may I
  ask who's calling?
  Voice: This is a courtesy
  call from [some credit card company].
  I [deciding to forego the
  usually-quite-amusing discussion of exactly why it is called a
  "courtesy call" when it interrupts my life to try to sell me something I don't want and which involves an enormous corporation profiting from human weakness, since the phone is getting wet]: Please remove us from your list, thank you.
  Voice: All right, as of
  January 7 2005 I am adding your name to our do not call list blah blah blah blah blah thirty seconds of small print while the phone continues to get wet and I begin to shiver because I can't bring myself to just hang up on the person; after all she's just doing her [albeit very annoying] job

• Call #4: Phone
  rings. I turn off water, swipe hand against towel -- you get it.
  

  My grandmother (the
  self-sufficient spunky one, not the whiny one or the dead one): Are your parents there?
  I: No.
  [sixty seconds of shivering, phone-soaking small talk]

  
  

Now. Guess how long I was in the shower, start to finish. Did you guess seven minutes? Because if you did, you would be right. And of course the phone hasn't rung since I got out, what, forty minutes ago now. Why should it, when it would be completely convenient for me to answer? That would be boring.