Culture: August 2004 Archives

At 6:15am, we got a belligerent phone call from an asshole who insisted that somebody had called him at 10:40pm from this number. He refused to believe me when I told him he was wrong. I repeated what I'd said many times as he yelled at me over and over, insisting that i was wrong and somebody had called him and (I guess) woken him up at 10:40 last night. Finally, I said, in my "you're an idiot" voice, "Nobody here called you. You are mistaken. You are harassing somebody who did nothing to you. I hope that fits into whatever ethical system you subscribe to" and hung up on him.

It absolutely amazes me that somebody would be so mean and abusive when they're informed that they're mistaken. There are a hundred reasons why this number could mistakenly appear on caller ID, not the least of which is that there was a problem on the phone company's part in transmitting caller ID data. I mean, god forbid we should consider that the phone company might not be entirely infallible.

And then, having reacxhed a human who assures you that you are mistaken and nobody from this number called you, why on earth would you insist that they are wrong, that somebody called you from this number, and demand to know who it was? Is it more likely that the other person will give in and admit that yes, they called you, and they apologize sincerely for disturbing you by making a phone call that was unanswered? Maybe I should have said, "You know, you caught me. I actually called you last night to tell you you're a fucking dickweed, and you should get over yourself. But you didn't answer the phone. Thanks for calling back so I could tell you in person."

Let's not even start with wondering why you would want to wake somebody up early for the crime of calling you at 10:40pm, which is not so far outside of decent calling hours to provoke such anger.

I have indecent thoughts of using *69 to call the guy all day long, but then again, I have so many better things to do with my life than get revenge on somebody who woke me up early. I'm not sure what those things are, but give me a moment; I'm working on only a couple hours of sleep here.

So now I'm wide awake on less than two hours of sleep, though now that the adrenaline is leaving my system I'm starting to yawn again.

It was a weird, magical night.

First, John came in from tinkering with his bike in the yard and said he'd heard gun shots, punctuated by the sound of a mechanism putting another round in the chamber. I hadn't heard it in the back parlour, but he said it sounded like it was just up the road behind the house.

Then Rosie was very anxious to go for a walk, so when I finished my taping for the evening, I took her out. She was worked up, spent a lot of time sniffing and refusing to walk.

She found a dollar bill in the road. I'm saving it for her college education.

We saw two night herons in Littlejohn Park. One flew away right away, the other watched us until Rosie barked at it.

When we were almost at the house, we came across three teenaged boys riffling through a duffle bag. They crept off as we walked up, so I stood by the bag for a while until they walked off down the street, saying, "Some people are bitches." I brought the duffle bag home and called the police to come get it. It turned out to be full of notebooks full of music (the policeman went through it when he got there, not me).

A strange, weird night.