Answer The Phones At Your Own Risk

I work in a small regional office for my company. The phone doesn't ring much, but when it does, it is sometimes an unhappy customer or an unhappy employee. A lot of times it's a wrong number. There is a definite increase in weird phone calls when there is a full moon. I could swear it is a full moon right now.

Around noon today the phone rang, and I answered. It was my mother.

"Are you OK?"

I thought she was referring to the blizzard we ended up not getting.

"I'm fine. We didn't get any snow, so I am here at work."

"No Hausfrau. I need to know what is going on. I just called your house and your number is disconnected and the operator said there was no forwarding number. What one EARTH is going on?!"

"Um, Mom, our number is not disconnected. This is the third time in the past year you have called to tell me that my phone is disconnected and it's not. We pay our bills. You're dialing the wrong number."

"Let me check--I dialed 610-867-5309--is that right?"

"Yes Mom. That's right. And it's not disconnected."

"HAUSFRAU! Don't argue with your mother. I am telling you it is disconnected."

"Mom. I will check it myself and call you back." Of course, when I called my house, my phone rang and went into voicemail. I hung up and debated calling her back. I had just spent five minutes talking to a crazy woman who was probably under the influence of bourbon or gin and I still didn't know why she had called. I had work to do. I called her back because I knew she would just keep calling.

I should have known that it would be a mistake to call her back. It was like a two hour Lifetime movie sped up to be 15 minutes in length. There was male-bashing (against my ex-brother-in-law,) witty one-liners, laughter, anger, swearing, and lots of tears. After I calmed her down, I told her I would call her after work and I hung up. I was exhausted.

An hour or so later, my boss got a call from her mother. Her call was much more amusing and interesting. It seems her cousin is the fake Jessica Simpson that the New York Post hired for the Dallas-Giants game.