I’ve never been a phone person. No doubt I get this from my dad. The man hated talking on the phone. Just despised it. No idea where his aversion came from. But it wasn’t genetic, my brother is on the phone all the time in his professional life. Way back when, he was even a customer service agent.
If in my working life I’d ever had to choose between being a customer service agent and being chronically unemployed, I’d likely have ended up living under a bridge.
Damn. I just heard an ad for Pepto-Bismol on Pandora and I’d swear that the jingle included the word “diarrhea.” Maybe being a jingle-writer might be an even worse job than being a customer service agent.
Maybe my dad used to be on the phone all the time and tired of people not understanding him because of his alleged accent. He started out as a junior-level banker and rose to be an EVP of a regional bank. Maybe at some point along the way he was able to pass off phone duties to subordinates. Everybody said my dad had not just an accent, but a thick one. I couldn’t hear any accent at all, he just sounded like my dad.
And I knew that, since he hated phones, I’d never get a call from him. In 50+ years, he’d never called me. Mom did, but not dad.
And then one day dad called.
I immediately assumed it was to tell me my mom had died. But she was okay, he just wanted to see how I was doing.
W. T. F.
As he spoke, I noticed a thick Norwegian accent, something I’d never heard before. Maybe the digitalization process chops off the upper or lower ranges of the human voice?
But he called at least once a week for a couple of years after that. Maybe he just needed to carry on a conversation. My mom had had a couple of strokes and her ability to speak had been quite restricted.
And still, me and phones don’t get along. And, boy oh boy, did I overcompensate. I married a woman who’s great on the phone. She talks confidently with customer service agents in a way that would induce internal bleeding in my case. And for decades she’s worked in a phone environment, currently as a senior telecommunications analyst.
But me, I still keep my distance from phone conversations. Everyone who knows me knows to text. I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving the ringer volume at zero. If you’re Joe Blow calling, leave a message. Maybe I’ll get back to you. Probably not.
But for some reason, the penny has never dropped for my good buddy Scam Likely. We go way back, but it’s just never clicked for the dude. Don’t know why. I haven’t seen him for years now. Oh, the stories he could tell. We used to go out for beers once in a while, usually with his latest girlfriend. Scam’s quite the ladies man, it seemed like he was with a different stunningly gorgeous woman each time I saw him. I never have figured out if he was dumping them or they were dumping him.
Not that it matters now though. We haven’t gone out for beers in ages. He’s been calling a lot lately but if it weren’t for the Caller I.D., I’d never know. Plenty of Scam Likely notices in the caller logs, but the dude’s not leaving any messages. No beers for us; seems like he’s not often in town. Just in the last week he’s called from eight different towns in Minnesota. And from towns I’ve never heard of in Maryland, Georgia, Texas, and Indiana. Is he juggling multiple women now?
Dude, if you want to go out for a beer, leave a message. How hard is that to understand?
@arcangePixaby image (Alexas_Fotos)
