Highlights from Voice Mail

[Acolyte]

I think the new version is coming out in a few weeks, maybe a month. I remember being told that I was one of the last people to take the old two-part test, so it's probably going to be soon.

Aaannddd...enough of that thread hijack.

[Dips]

A few times my cell (a 617 number) was being called by some businessman in AZ trying to get ahold of his buddy who as far as I could tell lived in MI He called a couple times (each call increasingly frantic), never leaving a number. I kinda felt sorry for the dude and wanted to call him back saying that my # wasn't the one he wanted, but he never left a number.

I've mentioned a few times on here that there is another person in our town with the same first and last name as my husband and our last name is not a common one.

The other fellow also had an unlisted number which meant that we got calls for him all the time; people would like up Jim Lastname in our town and they'd get our number. That was annoying enough, but half the time the callers would ask "Are you sure?" when we told them the had the wrong Jim Lastname and that we didn't know the other Jim Lastname's number because it was unlisted.

The most tragic ones were the voice mails where kids leave invitations for the other guy's kids or the other guy's boss would call with important information. No number was left so we couldn't call back, even if we wanted to (which we didn't; the other Jim Lastname CHOSE to have an unlisted number and it wasn't up to us to run up our phone bill to make that choice consequence-free for him).

Finally the other Jim Lastname called us and gave us his number. It seems that he was tired of missing important phone calls and hoped we could pass it along when someone was trying to reach him. We agreed; we gave his number out to EVERYONE who called for him. Friends, family, work buddies, telemarkerters and bill collectors.

He wasn't too happy about those last two, so he called back and asked if we could be more selective in giving out his number. I flatly told him that if he wanted his calls screened, he could hire a secretary to do it. His choices were I could give his number to everyone or noone. He chose everyone, but eventually I lost the number and he went back to noone.