Over the past few weeks Toney has received at least three wrong numbers on her cell phone, from people trying to order room service. And I find this to be both amusing, and curious.
Clearly, It would be a golden opportunity to engage in some good old-fashioned phone fun, turned inside-out. Caller ID and other technologies have all but ruined the proud sport of crank-calling, but when the calls come to you… Man, that’s good stuff.
I’ve tried to convince her to take their orders, repeat it back completely wrong (“You say oats and olives?”), take it again, then promise to send their food up straigh’ away. But Toney’s far too nice for such shenanigans, and the whole thing goes to waste.
But how could it even happen? While staying at a hotel, you don’t dial a full seven-digit number for room service, do you? Isn’t it generally a three or four-digit extension? How could all these hungry people be calling her phone? I don’t understand.
Any ideas? And have you ever had a similar experience? Do you have any interesting wrong number stories to tell? If so, we need to hear ‘em. Use the comments link below.
Toney and I were talking about something the other day, which had never occurred to me (not really). All four of us, we realized, have alternate universes outside the home.
Even the kids spend large parts of their days with people we’ve never met, in rooms we’ll never visit. And Toney and I work and interact with whole sitcom casts of characters, most of whom the rest of the family will never lay eyes on. It’s kinda strange.
We come together several times per week, at mealtime or whatever, and tell each other about what’s happening in our other worlds. And I have all of Toney’s main characters pictured inside my head, and she has mine. The boys tell us about kids and teachers from school, and I have no idea who most of them are. Toney knows more about their alternate worlds, but it’s like an old time radio show to me.
I never really thought about it, the fact that all four of us have significant experiences on a daily basis that don’t involve the family whatsoever. And no, I haven’t been smoking pot, thank you very much. Sheesh.
Do you have an opinion about the flu shot? It’s that time of year again when the social pressure starts to build, and we have to make a decision. We’ve never gotten it, for us or the younglings, but agonize annually.
When we lived in California the company would have a team of nurses come in and give the shot to any employee who wanted it. And it seemed like everyone who took them up on their offer was sick within days. But maybe that was skewed perception, I don’t know.
One of the main reasons I resist the shot, I think, is because I feel like I’m being manipulated into it. But is spite a valid reason to forgo such a thing? My instincts say yes, but my brain isn’t completely sure.
What do you think? Are you pro-flu shot, or against it? Have you ever gotten sick from one, or is that a myth? I’m pretty certain we won’t be participating, once again, but I could probably be persuaded to change my vote.
And speaking of sick… Half my co-workers seem to be hacking and coughing, and wiping snot halfway up their arms. It’s a disgusting display, and I’m doing my best to stay away from that roving pack of Typhoid Marys. But seriously, I’ve gotta be immune by now, don’t I? I’ve had two ass-kicking colds during the past couple of months; my system must be bulked-up and resistant to such things at this point, right?
Yeah, it’s a theory I’m clinging-to…
And since we’re talking about snot, there was a kid in my grade school (William P.) who sneezed one day and ejected a rope of nostril-putty that nearly reached the floor. The class howled in protest, and the kid immediately snorted the entire thing back into his nose. It just snapped right back to where it had come from, like a yo-yo, or a tape measure.
It’s been 35 years, and that scene is still (to paraphrase John Kerry) seared, seared in my memory.
Last night we turned on the heat in our house for the first time this year. We probably should’ve done it earlier, but Toney believes it’s a slippery slope and tries to delay it. Whatever. All I can tell you is, I’m not uncomfortable and bitching under my breath anymore. Well, about the temperature anyway…
And how accurate is this thing? For some reason I don’t believe it. I’m highly skeptical, and don’t really know why.
And that’s all the time I have for today, boys and girls.
I’ll see ya tomorrow.
Funny cell phone story, I was in Buffalo, NY for a race over a long weekend, and I got a call at 2am from a number I did not know. Well I was with a group and thought someone needed to contact me, and I was up all night from an injury anyway, it was a wrong number from the 215 area code (near me)and when I answered, a woman asked where are you? I said Buffalo, Where are you? She sounded confused and drunk, and hung up.
I never get the flu shot, and I have been lucky. But, I do believe Tiff, It is right, it going to make you sick before it protects you, it gives your body time to get used to the infecting bug.
I don’t get a flu shot anymore. The last time I got a flu shot it was during my lunch break. By the end of the day I had symptoms- felt hot, was sweating randomly. The next day was more of the same with random headache and body ache. I sort of felt out of it. It all erupted into the worst 2-3 days of diarrhea since I was 4 and drank from a stagnant pond and got giardia.
So no, no flu shots for me.
The real killer is that it was two days before my wife’s company Christmas party at a Ruth’s Chris and four days before my company’s party. I was bitter.
Yeah, there are no ‘Garcias’ in Mexico. Wicked accurate, as they say up here.
The flu shot works, every time i get one i get the flu!
A long time ago in MD my parents phone was one digit off from the new Pizza hut, and after a week or so we decided as a family that we would take all orders, telling every one that their order would be ready in 20 minutes. Every now and then we;d go up and sit in the parking lot if we had a high call volume, just for kicks.
Nor are there Nguyens in Vietnam, or Abduls in the Middle East. Fishy!
I absolutely will NOT get a flu shot! I’ve personally know 2 people who contracted Guillain-Barré Syndrome (look it up on Google) immediately after they got a flu shot. One was a co-worker in his 20’s who started to become paralyzed within 24 hours of the shot. It started in his legs, and when it moved up to his chest, he could no longer breathe. He was hospitalized in critical condition and put into a medically induced coma while plasmapheresis was administered to try to counteract the effects of the shot. It was terrible to see him in the hospital in a coma. His wife, who had just had their first child, was devastated. After several months and physical therapy, he recovered to about 90% of his former self (still some limb weakness).
The other person was not so lucky. She was the college age daughter of a co-worker. She fell ill within a day of receiving a flu shot, and was also hospitalized in critical condition. However, she continued to get worse and went into a coma on her own. She never came out of it. She is still in a vegetative state in a nursing home (over 8 years now).
Several years ago they built a prison halfway house in the town I live. Unfortunately for me, the pay phone in the hallway for prisoner use had nearly the same number as my home phone, but with the last two digits reversed. I used to get calls in the middle of the night from people asking for their incarcerated loved ones.
Yeah, it radiply went from: “Sorry, wrong number,” to things like, “Sorry, he tried to escape and he’s in solitary now,” to things like, “The priest didn’t call you? He was executed last night.”
And the alternate universe thing is common in my life. My wife constantly tells me things like, “I don’t even know who you are when you are around your friends and co-workers.” “Yeah honey, you see, even though YOU think I’m a worthless, lazy douchebag, there are people out there who actually appreciate my rapier wit.”
Flu shots….I dunno. I got one last year only because I was helping to man a booth at a community health and safety fair. My co-worker and I got roped into getting them from a nurse at a nearby booth. No ill effects, but that said, I haven’t had the flu in the last 40 years. So, who knows.
BTW, Jeff, I was talking to an old friend from childhood days last night, and somehow he got off on a sidetrack and was talking about the genius of Phil Hendrie. I told him about you, and gave him the address for thewvsr.com. Hopefully he’ll enjoy this site as much as I do!
….Oh, and to you, Tadpolegal, don’t EVER be sorry for being on Vicodin. Whenever I am lucky enough to get it prescribed, my first stop after the pharmacy is the Catholic Church to light a candle and give thanks to God. 😉
I got the flu so bad one year I developed pneumonia. Don’t ever want to be that ill again. Every year since I have gotten the flu shot. Haven’t had the flu since. Never got the flu from getting the shot. (???) I plan on getting another one this year. I wish my company would offer them on site.
My wife and I stayed at a B&B in Virginia. The lady who ran it said a local auto parts store put an ad in the yellow pages selling car batteries. There was a typo in the phone book and they got all their calls. After a while they just gave up and started selling car batteries as a sideline and made some nice extra money.
One of my Top 10 movie scenes of all time: Ruthless People, 1986. Danny DeVito’s character answers the phone, listens to the caller for a second, and says, “Debbie? No, Debbie can’t come to the phone right now. My dick is in her mouth! Can she call back later?” Caller hangs up, and Danny says to the onlooker in the room, “I love wrong numbers!”
Classic!
Havent had a flu shot since grade school. Haven’t had the flu either. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
We get wrong numbers at work all the time. I’m on a military base, but our number is not one of the Army’s private lines, so its a regular city line. People call all the time for various different things. They try to sell me insurance, buy pizzas, promise to erase my debt, it’s pretty amusing.
I really enjoy it when I’m having a bad day because it gives me an excuse to be rude as hell to people on the phone and let my frustrations out.
Jeff- are you a day ahead of the rest of us (based on the title of yesterdays post)
When I was a college freshman living in a dorm, I had only been on campus a couple of weeks when I got an early morning call. My roommate answered and said it was for me. Half asleep, I got on the phone and the guy on the other end started rambling on about somesuch. After about 30 seconds or so I stopped him and said “who is this?”. He said that he was my dad and kept going. I stopped him again and said “come on, who is this? You’re not my dad”. He kept insisting that he was indeed my father and we argued about it for a minute. We finally figured out that his son with the same first name as me had lived in the room the prior year and he still had the old number.
If you have kids, then you have little Typhoid Mary’s bringing pestillence and death into your home. Sorry, but it’s true. Once the youngun’s grew up & moved out, bouts of flu and cold’s dropped off to almost none.
My husband gets flu shots (he’s diabetic, and his employer usually pays for them for employees), I don’t usually bother, and I don’t recall seeing him get sick from it.
As for wrong numbers, my most memorable was on my wedding night. DH and I had not told ANYONE where we were staying that night (we didn’t think anyone we knew would prank us, but still….). We got multiple calls from some woman trying to find her daughter. After about the third ill-timed call, my new husband chewed her out for not paying attention, explained (yet again) that we didn’t know anyone by her daughter’s name (true), and that if she didn’t mind, he wanted to be able to concentrate on his wedding night, TYVM. She did stop calling. 🙂
I’ve noticed that when I get a wrong-number call, men tend to get grumpy about it, women tend to be apologetic.