Lately, as I've become more familiar with the characteristics of introverts, I've discovered that telephone issues are pretty common amongst us. Us introverts, that is. Still...
I was about 16, at home alone one evening when the phone rang. Being as I was home alone, it was up to me to walk into the kitchen where our rotary dial phone hung and pick up the handset.
"Hello?"
Before the days of Caller ID, I had no idea who was on the other end of the line. Whoever it was asked for my mother.
"She's not available right now. May I take a message?"
"No, that's OK," the lady said. She explained that her son was about to leave for college, and was just wondering what kinds of things she would need for his dorm room. She knew that my brother had started college the year before, and was going to ask my mother for some tips.
"Hmmm, I don't really know, but if you'll leave me your name and number, I'll have my mom call you when she gets home."
"No, that's OK," she said again.
She thanked me for my trouble, and we hung up. Sometime later, my parents came home and I mentioned the call to my mother. Big mistake. I got chewed up one side and down the other.
"You should have taken a message!!!" my mother screamed at me.
I'd asked twice, and the lady had declined. What was I supposed to do? Crawl through the phone line and forcibly extract a message from her? My mother and I got into such an argument that my daddy actually yelled at me. It's the only time in my life I can remember him yelling at me like that.
My mother eventually figured out who had called, and returned her call. Then I had to listen to her apologize for "her stupid daughter who didn't know how to take a message."
Sigh, is it any wonder I have phone issues.
In other news, it's cold outside. It's so cold, that my knitting mojo seems to have headed South for the winter.
Souther than Mississippi, at least.
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