Another Day in the Country
Alloh, alloh? Who’s calling?
© Another Day in the Country
Someone sold my telephone number! Yes, I’m one of those antiques who still has a land line. I do it for several personal reasons, and it’s no secret because my number is published in TC Telco’s phone book every year.
Suddenly, however, “my phone is ringing off the hook,” as my Gramm used to say.
“Ringing off the hook” is one of those phrases I sprinkle though my conversations that causes my grandson to ask, “What exactly does that mean?”
Of course, I’d tell him the story of a telephone like Auntie Jess has in her living room — wooden, with a “receiver” on the end of a cord and a mouthpiece that you have to talk into.
It would ring in everyone’s house that was on your party line, but there was a code for your house so that you knew when to pick it up and answer.
That’s the long and short of it — a pun.
All of this is being told to a 17-year-old who carries a phone in his pocket.
On my landline, my kids can most easily get me because I refuse to carry my cell phone around and refuse to have the ringer on when I do carry it.
“You are the hardest person in the world to get on the phone,” my daughter says. “I leave long messages on your answering machine in hopes you pick up, finally, and you sometimes do but….”
That’s beside the point.
The point is, it is not my loved ones trying to reach me. It is someone trying to sell me something or convince me of something — which is pretty much the same — and I don’t need that.
Having lived so long, with so many iterations of the telephone, I forgot entirely about the code that everyone had for their phones. It was like Morse code: one long, two shorts, or dot dot dash.
This incessant calling on my line started before the election. First they called in person,
“Would you vote for Kamala, if she were nominated?”
“She doesn’t have a ghost of a chance in Kansas,” I said. “She’s ethnic and a woman.”
But, they kept calling — in person, I might add. And, I kept giving them my opinion.
I wanted to have . . . .
(Just now, predictive speech put in “Mohave” for “to have” even though I thought that brilliant feature was turned off. It turns out it was on my phone where I’d turned off, and now I’m typing on my computer. Anyway, where was I?)
I wanted to have more faith in America, but I’m a pretty realistic person.
So, for months my landline has been inundated with robocalls — robots, either human-sounding or otherwise, making call after call to various numbers waiting for some poor sucker to pick up.
You can tell if it’s a robocall because there’s a time lapse on the line.
When the weather is nice, I’m outdoors, so who cares if there are robocalls. They won’t talk to the answering machine. But now, it’s winter, cold, and I’m inside more.
The phone rings, and I race in the door from duck watching to grab it before the answering machine kicks on, but it’s a robot.
Usually, I hang up when I hear the pause, but this time, without even thinking, I yell back: “Who the heck is this constantly calling and make this old lady race for the phone. It better not be the Democrats!”
I’m sure I said even more, and then I realized the robot was giving me a canned message. It was saying, “I completely understand…blah blah blah,” and I interrupted and I yelled.
“No, you can’t possibly understand because you’re a dumb computer.”
I slammed down the phone. It was a recorded voice, not a real person, in case you are wondering.
“Help!” I called my sister. “You are at the health department. This is bad for my health. How do I get this to stop.”
“My Dear Sister,” she said calmly, “take a deep breath, call this number: (888) 382-1222. It takes a couple of weeks to activate.”
On my second try, I got through. It was easy. The calls haven’t stopped but hopefully they will.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it was Sunday morning, my sister and I had breakfast together, and as is our custom, we were watching “Sunday Morning.” The phone rang. Jess jumped up to answer but didn’t make it in time.
“It’s OK,” I said, “It’s Jana. She did the code.”
We haven’t lived this long without learning a trick or two ourselves.
“I gave her a code, just like Gramm used to have out on the farm,” to use on another day in the country.