Sorry, wrong number

Back in the good old days before Caller-ID, dialing a wrong number was, at worse, a matter of an apology. Occasionally, you might have hold of someone you'd accidentally dragged out of the shower, but it didn't happen much. You'd apologize, and that was it. At best, you'd realize your mistake at the answering machine message or simply hang-up. No one was the wiser.

But dialing--we still say 'dial', don't we even when we're punching those little numbers--a wrong number now can not only have consequences for your pride but make you feel like a criminal.

I don't dial many wrong ones, but it happens. I'll never forget the woman who obviously had me ID'ed and was ever so rude when she called back to tell me what a bad person I was. She didn't recognize the number, but she called back anyway. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but this gal was way out of line. My mistake was in telling her my name, although she was satisfied with one roasting of me.

So this morning, calling a friend while opening the shutters and pouring the coffee, I hit a zero instead of an eight. The phone rang and rang, which was unusual given the early hour, and finally flipped to an unfamiliar voice mail pick-up. A standard cell phone message and I'd been aiming for a land line. Oops! I hung up, dialed the real thing, still didn't get an answer.

But I knew who was on the end of the line when the phone rang not two minutes later and it wasn't going to be my friend. I chirped a 'hello'.

She asked who was speaking. Now, I've fallen for that line before. I didn't recognize her voice, knew it was my mis-dial, so I plunged into the apology about being all thumbs, etc. She sighed, told me she was afraid it was one of her sons, and then wished me a blessed day. I granted her one in return and vowed once again to be nice to all wrong numbers.