> at 2 50 in the morning.
>
> Some of my faves are
>
> ~My ex-gf who drunk-dialled me from her bachelorette party
> ~The black chick from North Carolina who remained firmly unconvinced that I was white (I'm the whitest guy imaginable)
>
> and now, added to that illustrious list, is the following conversation:
>
> Monday, December 4, 2006, 2 50 am.
>
> Phone ringing. Why is John calling? He's ten feet away.
> Look at the number. "Withheld." Probably a wrong number.
> "Hello?"
> "Hi!"
> Don't recognize the voice, cheery female, probably early to mid twenties.
> There's also a strange intermittent buzzing noise on the line.
> "Hi..."
> "Whaaaaaat are you doing?"
> Still don't recognize the voice. Not even familiar.
> "I'm at work right now. What are you doing?" buzz buzz.
> "I'm thinking about you."
> ... what? This is where I lost control of the conversation. That's just NOT the sort of things girls say to me.
> "Oh... well... cool."
> "Do you know who this is?"
> "Not... not really." buzz buzz.
> "Guess."
> "Ummm... uh... ah... Give me a clue."
> "I'm beautiful."
> That doesn't help any, I know lots of beautiful girls.
> "Give me another."
> "TLAC."
> ... what? For a minute, I was unsure of the word she said, but no, it was definitely "TLAC."
> "...okay, umm..."
> "I've done plays with you. Acted on stage." buzz buzz.
> "Ah.... uh..."
> "Just give me a guess. One guess."
> Okay, picking a name at random.
> "Um, Judy."
> "Yes."
> It wasn't Judy. I knew it wasn't, because I've heard Judy's voice in all sorts of different emotional moments. I've heard it happy, sad, irritated, frustrated, angry, and every single way inbetween, and this was not her voice, and Mystery Girl wasn't using any of Judy's- for lack of a better word- Judyisms.
> "You sound very different."
> "There must be something going around." buzz buzz.
> I saw Judy 9 hours ago, chick, She was doing fine. Sounded just like herself.
> "Why is your number coming up "Withheld"?"
> "Aren't I in your address book?"
> "Judy is, yeah, but it wasn't her number that came up."
> "Well, that's weird, it should have." buzz buzz.
> "Who is this, really?"
> "You don't believe me?"
> "Well, you don't sound anything like Judy, and your number came up "withheld," instead of how I have it listed in my address book, so..."
> "If you don't want to talk to me, I'll just go."
> "No no no, all I'm saying is..."
> click.
>
> And darn it, I wanna know who it was.
> It's driving me nuts.
>
> -Rifty

We have an answering machine that attracts kooky stuff like that. Someone used to call thinking she had gotten a nurse's machine. Then she would reel off a bunch of schedule changes at some hospital somewhere. That went on for a long time, but finally stopped. I still wonder what clued her in.

Just a week ago, a young lady called me from Vancouver, Washington. Her name was Nikki and she wanted to ask me some questions about Cushman motor scooters. I tried and tried to call her back*, mainly because I was curious about how someone that far away got my name and number and also my connection to Cushmans. Finally, on Saturday evening, someone picked up the phone. It was a man and he said she was not there, but that he would have her call me. So far, nothing.

I tried a reverse search, but all of the search engines want money to tell you who it is.

When I was teaching, I got a lot of middle-of-the-night crank calls, usually from 13-year-old girls who were having a "slumber" party. But caller I.D. and *69 put a stop to that.

Before that, the slumber party part was useful. The next morning I would walk into homeroom and say to one of the girls, "I heard you had a slumber party." And she would say, "No, that was _____."
Or "No, but I went to one at ______'s house."

The parents were always apologetic.
Howard
*We have unlimited long-distance as a part of a package deal.