They say that careless talk costs lives. Well, I want the head of whoever called at 8pm tonight. Allow me to elucidate.
At 8pm tonight, I was attempting to get the youngest of my two sons to bed. Jeremy, just over one year old, was in my arms, just dropping off as I gently rocked him. His mum was out, it was up to me.
I know, I should’ve taken the phone off the hook before I started. Stupid me. But I didn’t. And, just as Jeremy dozed off into the world of sleepy dreamland, the phone rang. It rang loudly, as all phones do when you don’t want to get calls. The consequences of this were far reaching. Jeremy woke, and started crying. The phone stopped after five rings, when the answering machine grabbed the call. Jeremy kept crying. That kind nothing-is-right-in-the-world cry that only little kids who are in dire need of sleep can cry.
Two minutes later, he threw up his dinner. He had eaten a truly humungous amount of dinner. I know, because it all came up again, in four installments. The first two came up in the bedroom where I’d been holding him. By the time of the third and fourth installments I’d made it to the bathroom and had his head pointed into the bath.
Half an hour later, when it was cleaned up and the kids were asleep, I endeavoured to find out what delightful person had called. The bastards hadn’t even had the grace to leave a message on the answering machine. The answering machine had taken the call, so the Last Unanswered Number *10# thingy wouldn’t work. Curses!
The moral of this story? If you call someone, and their answering machine picks up the call, because they’re too busy doing something else, or just can’t come to the phone, at least have the decency to leave a message. That’s what the damn thing is there for.
And if you’re a telemarketer, who doesn’t know when it might be inconvenient to call a particular person… then just don’t. Especially if it’s me. Or next time, instead of buying your product (which I wouldn’t do anyway) I might just ask you to come and help clean up the vomit.
