Has anyone here ever gotten a really odd, off-the-wall message on their answering machine?
My grandmother left an odd message last night. I spent most of Saturday afternoon and evening with her, going to a political rally and the symphony, and at some point I mentioned that all of the walking we were doing was aggravating an ingrown toenail. She didn’t say anything at the time, though she had a look of worry and disapproval on her face. That aspect of the conversation lasted maybe five seconds.
Then last night, out of nowhere, she leaves a message on my machine: “Hi, Jonathan, it’s Grandma… I forgot - about your ingrown toenail. You don’t want to have surgery, it’s dangerous… (Insert her home remedy for ingrown toenails, something about cotton balls soaked in alcohol) Okay? I hope that helps. Call me in the morning. Buh-bye.”
It took me a few moments after the message started to figure out what she meant when she said “I forgot about your ingrown toenail.” Apparently, this was something she’d meant to tell me Saturday and it lurked in the back of her mind all day Sunday, finally coming to the surface that night, and she just had to call me and let me know what I should do.
I used to have an elderly black lady call me once a week and leave a message for Sister Lurcretia reminding her about the bible study meeting. She always ended it with a quote from scripture. I really looked forward to it.
I got a message not too long ago from some elderly-sounding man informing me that he had some material for my newsletter. I don’t have a newsletter. I had no clue what he was talking about.
I got another one more recently, too, but I can’t remember what it said. Dammit!
On a similar note, I used to live in a college town and had a number very similar to that of a local pizza place. I’d get wrong numbers pretty frequently. I got sick of explaining this to people over and over again (especially when the same ones would call repeatedly!) so I just started taking orders. “That’ll be ready in 20 minutes to a half hour! Have a nice day!”
I have a recurring wrong number message. Usually about once every six months. The first time, I called them back and told them I wasn’t who they thought I was. Since then, they don’t leave a number and I always worry that someone is going to be sitting for hours waiting for someone who doesn’t show.
I had a nice message from a guy named Dave a couple of weeks back. It was kind of long and rambling, but he said that he had heard I moved to the Chicago area and he was in Denver and tracked me down. Just wanted to catch up and talk about the time we hung out in the Florida Keys (“That was a great time, wasn’t it, Colin?”).
Ummm…I’ve never been to the Florida Keys and that didn’t sound like any Dave I’ve ever known. I didn’t really know what to do.
I once got a message from a law office about money owed to a plumber. Except it was a wrong number. The problem was, the person who left the message apparently didn’t notice that when I said my name on the recorded message, it didn’t match the name of the person they were trying to reach. And they didn’t mention the name of the person they were trying to reach in their message, so I wasn’t sure if it was a wrong number or not until I was able to call them back the next day (I only knew I didn’t owe any plumbers any money).
We happened to run into a friend of ours at a gaming store in a nearby town. The friend lives at the same town we do, but most gamers from our town make regular pilgrimages there, so it was a pleasant surprise running into him but not a miraculous coincidence.
He told us that the real reason he was there was that he was going to see a movie, but he couldn’t remember the name of the movie. He knew what time it was playing at that theater, and who the stars were, but just couldn’t come up with the name, and the hubby and I didn’t know it either.
He left to see his movie, and we continued shopping, then had dinner, and made the hour-long drive back home. When we got there, there was an answering machine message from our friend telling us the name of the movie. He’d called on his cell phone when he got to the theater.
Upon rereading this, it doesn’t seem nearly as funny as it did then, but I dunno, it just tickled me for some reason–us meeting by chance in another city, and him feeling compelled to call us as soon as he knew the name of the movie, even though he knew we wouldn’t be home or hear the message for a couple of hours.
I recently moved, and until the new edition of the city phone books came out, my new number had apparently belonged to an elderly lady named Jessie. I used to get calls from doctors’ offices or insurance companies asking various questions. I usually didn’t return the calls to tell them they had a wrong number. Instead I changed my message to include not only my name and number, but also a message that if they were looking for Jessie, there was no one with that name at my number.
One morning at about 5 AM at my old place, I got a message from a county police sergeant warning a Mr Raymond (or whatever) that, “we have someone watching the vehicle” and to stay away from it, or he was “going to foul everything up.” This one sounded important, so I called the number he left and got the next shift sergeant, who said he’d leave a message. I was puzzled for a while what that message could’ve meant.
When I was in high school, I wrote an outgoing message based on Hamlet’s famous dialogue … “To leave or not to leave a message, that is the question …” We got a lot of messages that were just people laughing. Then one day a friend of mine got me back. He left the message, “To be or not to be, gays in the military …”
We get wrong number messages all the time, and I always feel bad about it. One little girl didn’t get to tell her daddy goodnight because she accidentally called our number. Another person missed out on homemade chili.
Years ago, I got a series of increasingly distraught messages from some woman weeping to her boyfriend, in Spanish. I could understand just enough to know she was wailing that he wasn’t calling her back, she loved him, etc., but she was so unintelligible there was no way I could catch any of the return phone number so I could call her back and tell her she had the wrong number.
My brother told me that last Friday there was a message on my machine from a woman saying that she had found my number in her main’s phone and that I better watch out because she had been with him for seven years and that she’d kick my ass. None of this was referring to me by name.
I know for a fact that anyone I would have called has definitely not had an SO for seven years that I am unaware of. Very strange and oh so ghetto.
I kept ringing a friend of mine and either he wasn’t there or he wasn’t available but he kept failing to return my calls.
I rang everyone I knew that wasn’t home and had an answering machine and recorded the message. I then rang Chris and each time I was asked to leave a message I left someone else’s recorded message.
Chris thought he wsa going crazy because his recorded messages seemed to indicate that his answering machine was ringing other answering machines while he was out.
The city I used to live in had another resident by the same name (Not too common). While checking on my voters registration on-line I found out she also has the same middle initial & year of birth I do. She also had an unlisted number. I, on the other hand, did not. I got calls from old high school chums, student loan officers, strange men she met at the bar…
The best call I received came in early one Saturday morning after a night of hard partying. I heard the phone ringing while in the shower, so I made sure to check it when I got out.
“Hi, Teresa. It’s your Aunt Judy. Leslie & I are down at Prontos (restaurant). We’re waiting for a table & thought we’d invite you to brunch since it’s so close. How often do I get to have brunch with my favorite nieces? Call me back.”
The funny part is … my sister’s name is Leslie. It took me about 10 seconds to realize I don’t have an “Aunt Judy”. I thought about showing up and asking Leslie & Judy why they don’t know Teresa’s phone number. :rolleyes:
I don’t know who Ricardo Sanchez is, but he definitely needs to call Scott back at an 888 number and discuss this matter further by quoting a reference number Scott leaves on my answering machine every few days. I hope Ricardo Sanchez doesn’t like, drop by to pick up his messages, 'cause I’m afraid I haven’t been writing them down.
I also get calls semi-frequently where the Caller ID says “Mexican Restaurant” and the message is entirely in Spanish. What trips me out about this (and Eve’s story about the sobbing woman) is that my greeting is in English and I say my name very clearly. People just don’t listen to answering machine greetings, even to the point of not noticing gender of the speaker or language spoken!
I was head nurse at an outpatient dialysis center. I was the first to arrive each morning (5:30am yawnnn) Part of my routine was to listen to the messages left overnight. Usually doctors calling in orders or patients calling to whine. (Who said that? ) The answering machine was on the floor under the desk, I can’t remember why.
One morning the first caller was obviously drunk and obviously at a bar or a vey loud party. He said somethig along the lines of Well … well… dealsus huh… well. I put a bomb in there … well… its goin’ off …shut up, I lost my quarter (this a little away from the phone) well… its gonna blow the s*** out you at noon. /Click
I sat there on the floor, under the desk, thinking. Its a drunk. He lost his last quarter and was pissed. I should just erase it… Then another nurse walked in. I had her listen. She believed every word. Silly me she believed the world was flat too. But, having shared the call I had to go through the whole process.
I called hospital security. They told me to call Admin wheile they called 911.
I had police, fire, ATF and half of hospital admin in my unit for the rest of the day. Fire evacuated the patients and other staff, but Admin insisted I stay to answer any questions. Obviously no bomb was found. Good thing too, since so many people were milling around inside.
It surprised me that the “professionals” allowed so many to satay inside. I guess, after hearing the message, they didn’t believe it either.
I saved this one for months. And yes, I am white with a very white-sounding voice.
(black middle-aged man’s voice): Hello, this yo’ cousin Shawn…Sound like you got some white people on yo’ answering machine. If this is yo’ number, call me back at 555-1212.
This reminds me of an interview I saw with Kevin Pollack (who does some of the best impressions in the world, if you ask me.) According to Kevin, he would occasionally call Alan King and leave Alan messages in Alan’s voice. Things to the effect of “Alan, this is you. Don’t forget such and such” etc. I thought it was the funniest thing… Apparently Alan was eventually pretty much onto the fact that it was Kevin doing it. Just imagining getting home and hearing some smart aleck leaving me messages in my own voice.
I got a message once that went something like this:
Cheerful voice: “Hi guys, I’m getting out of rehab in 4 days and I want to come over and pick up my tortoise. I hope he’s okay. You have no idea how much it means to me that you looked after my tortoise all this time. See ya soon!”
The scariest message I ever was got was from this freaky woman who had lived next door to me until I finally managed to get her evicted. She was mentally unstable and very frightening. I’d had her arrested for disturbing the peace several times and apparently she got my phone number off one of the police reports. Not long after she moved, I came home to this message:
FreakyPsychopath: “I don’t know you…but yes I do. You should not be turning me in for playing music in the middle of the day (note that she played music full blast at 2:00AM). My husband, President Bushes [sic] and the FBI** are going to be bringing you down. You leave me alone! You’re going DOWN!! {insert 2 minutes of heavy breathing}”
Thankfully I never heard from her again.
*I found out later from her roommate that she believed that her husband was David Hasslehoff
**She once screamed at me through the wall that I should go ahead and call the police on her because she was a secret spy for the FBI.
