A Crank Call

The first I became conscious of movement was when I bent down to pick up the phone. The time: 1:30 a.m.

“Hullloo?” I said, my words slurring just a bit.

“Is Kris there?”

“This is Kris.”

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Well, I was sleeping!”

And the little twerp laughed! I could tell the voice was that of a freshly post-pubescent little teenage boy. I was not with it enough to think coherently, but I did ask him what his name was so that I could possibly figure out what he wanted.

“Tom Grady,” he said.

“I don’t know a Tom Grady.”

“Yes, you do.”

And then we spent more precious time arguing about whether or not I knew a Tom Grady. Why I didn’t just hang up, I don’t know. Too stupid at 1:30 in the morning, I guess. Sharon had been roused by the ringing of the phone, and she stood in the doorway listening on her extension. I was finally exasperated enough that I asked, “Sharon, do we know a Tom Grady?” She confirmed that indeed, we did not.

“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “We’re supposed to go fishing tomorrow.”

Hah. Now there was no doubt in my mind that I didn’t know him. I wouldn’t make plans to go fishing even if I was in the sanest state of mind. I convinced him that even though he knew my last name and my address and even though he “was 32,” he had the wrong number. I hung up. Sharon decided our door should be locked.

Ok. Now that was bad enough. But about three minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, Tom Grady’s manner of conversation deteriorated in a very short amount of time. I cannot even repeat the gist of what he was trying to say, such poor choice of topic he had. Sharon had again picked up, and she was getting huffy. She tried to dial *67 after we hung up the second time, but of course, it didn’t work. Against my pleas, she viciously turned on the light and looked in the phone book for the number you dial to block anonymous calls, *77.

We went back to bed. We were both ticked off enough that we couldn’t go to sleep again right away. Would you believe the little twerp called four more times for a total of six times?? Instead of talking, however, I would just pick it up and disconnect it. Once, I just did the “heavy breathing” thing, and I heard him say, “She’s just cutting me off.” We knew there was someone else there with him, because we had heard the second party whisper our last name to him earlier.

After the fourth time, I was just as huffy as Sharon was. So for the next ten minutes while Sharon lay in her bed thinking of all the insults she wanted to say to him, I lay there in my bed with my cordless phone in hand. I would turn the phone on to get dial tone and wait long enough until it went to the recording just prior to giving the “off the hook” alarm. I would turn it off and then right back on. This would give the Twerp a busy signal. If he had called back one more time, we would’ve simply unplugged our phones and let him talk to the answering machine.

Needless to say, this was not a very restful night for us. And the next morning, I just couldn’t understand why my alarm wouldn’t shut off when I kept hitting the “talk” button on my phone.

Some people have too much time on their hands.