Have you ever been so frustrated about something that you can’t even swear properly? I am in a very similar state just now.
Last night at 11:30 p.m., our telephone rings, waking my wife and I up. As my wife is a doctor, this is not an unusual thing. However she is not on call and it rapidly becomes clear that the person my wife is talking to is not calling for a medical purpose (other than to verify certain psychological diagnoses).
This person, the Caller ID Avenger, has chosen 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday evening to investigate a “mysterious” phone call she recieved. Apparently she has received a number of these “mysterious” phone calls, at least one of which came from a phone that identified itself as my phone.
You would think that the irony of this woman calling us at such a late hour to discuss crank phone calls might give her pause. Nope. She came loaded for bear. She even told my wife that she was recording the conversation.
When it became obvious that my wife wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise I started asking her for the phone. My wife is a very polite person and would never dream of telling off someone she doesn’t know. I, on the other hand, have no such qualms. There is a reason that my family no longer calls me at odd hours.
But my wife won’t give the phone. I ask again . . . and again . . . and again. See, in addition to being a generally very polite person, my wife is slow to wake up and she wasn’t about the give up the phone. So I’m laying there listening to some crackpot browbeating my wife in the middle of the night. The idea of sleep is now completely gone and I do the only thing that I think will short circuit this little circus: I reached over and hung up the phone. My wife was half pleased in that she no longer had to listen to the Avenger and half annoyed in that I had taken matters into my own hands. “She’ll only call back!” said my wife. And she was right.
So a minute later I answer the phone in my best loud and angry voice and ask the Avenger what her problem is. She is also annoyed. Good. At that point I start channelling my father: “What is wrong with you? Don’t you know its the middle of the night?” While I don’t think I used profanity, I did get it across that only a moron would be calling for her purposes at that time of the night. I closed out the call by telling her that if she had a problem she should call the cops. Before she hung up on me, she promised that she would indeed call the cops. I would love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. "So you called this family at 11:30 p.m. and are upset because you were yelled at? . . . "
It took me 2 hours to get back to sleep.
What the hell is it about caller ID that makes these idiots think that they deserve an explanation for every phone call that they receive? The Avenger is only the most recent member of her tribe of morons that I have had the misfortune to meet. I have never received a call from someone using their caller ID to track down the evil doer that had the temerity to call when they couldn’t pick up the phone that was even marginally polite. Half the time its some bonehead I’ve called as a result of a classified ad or something. Chances are the Avenger is a patient of the clinic at which my wife works and recieved a call from my wife as a result of a page. If it is, I would hope that she recieves the old three finger rectal exam next time she’s in for a check under the hood.
Is there any way we can get *666 enabled to electrocute these idiots when they call late at night? Nothing deadly mind you, just enought to wipe out their caller ID get them back onto their old pre-caller ID conspiracy theories.
