What the hell? Some weird Arabic guy keeps calling me!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

When I moved into my last apartment it turned out that our new phone number had, um, a shady past.

We used to get phone calls at 2 in the morning like this:

Me: Mmmmfmmfhhello? [Like I said, it was 2 in the morning, and I had had to stagger down a dark hallway to the kitchen besides]

Caller: How much for a girl?

Me: What?

Caller: How much for a girl? For tonight?

Yes, somewhere out there our number was being given out as belonging to an escort service. This went on for about a year–and then the new phone books came out and they stopped. After a while I considered taking the callers’ credit card numbers, but I eventually decided it would only lead to more phone calls. Alas.

The ‘Hi, this is [me] and [my roommate], and we don’t run an escort service so if that’s why you’re calling please hang up now’ answering machine message amused our friends and relations, though. Oh, those wacky New Yorkers.

22

It also anagramizes into “Arab cash kid.” What do we make of that?

23

Just wait 'till Astro gets his phone bill.

They say Osama always calls collect.

24

My previous phone number had once belonged to another “Jeff Olsen”, which resulted in a couple of interesting conversations. And according to the phone book, some guy named Nestor Abad had that number just before me. He’s evidently a Filipino because twice in the middle of the night I was called by an operator asking if I would accept a collect call from the Philipines! The first time I just said “no” and hung up. The second time I explained that the number no longer belonged to Mr. Abad and had not for at least 5 years.