Fun Times on the Party Line

Thanks to the invention of the cell phone, almost everyone, from young children to senior citizens, now has a private phone line. It wasn’t always like that. Too bad cell phones weren’t around when I was in high school. Cell phones would have made my friends and me very happy and kept people from getting annoyed with us.

Until the early 1960s, we had to share a line with four other telephone customers. One of them was the elementary school; another was a family who lived near the school. I think the third customer might have been an organization that didn’t have anyone working there on a daily basis. I have no idea as to who the fourth party was. Apparently, those people didn’t use the phone much.

When I was a junior in high school, I would come home from school, drag the phone into the hall closet, and call my best friend who went to a different school. Yeah, I confess that sometimes we tied up the line for well over an hour. Or more.

The grandmother of the family living near the school frequently interrupted our conversations, asking us to get off the line because she had to “make an important phone call.” Grandma was polite about it, and so were we. We always hung up so she could use the line.

Her grandson, whom I’ll call “Jack,” was a different story.

One afternoon, Kate and I must have been discussing some really interesting teen gossip. I never heard the click that indicated someone was checking the line. Then again, maybe Jack liked eavesdropping, just in case we mentioned someone he knew.

After putting up with us for what probably seemed like hours to him (but really wasn’t) he broke into our conversation, yelling, “Get off the phone. You two are on the phone twenty-four hours a day. Why don’t you move in with each other?”

I was stunned by his outburst, so I had no words. Kate started arguing with him. I don’t remember what she told him, but I’m sure it was something I wouldn’t repeat here. Anyway, we did get off the phone. And I think I stayed off the party line for a while—maybe even for the rest of the day.

Mystery Novels Can Be Hazardous to Your Sleep

Maybe I should stick to reading romances before bedtime. I suspect that reading mystery novels probably isn’t the best way to relax at the end of the day.

The other night, I stayed up way too late because I wanted to finish reading a serial killer novel. Actually, another character with homicidal tendencies also popped up in the story. That one was a surprise— and not a pleasant one.

Later that night, or, more likely, very early the next morning, I had a dream about the second murderer, the one who wasn’t a serial killer. I’ll call him “Dewey,” but that’s not his fictional real name.

I dreamed that Dewey had kidnapped me and one of my friends. He threatened to kill us if we made the proverbial false move. Dewey drove us to a humongous industrial complex where he forced us to apply for assembly line jobs at a company that manufactured some of those widgets hyped in “as seen on TV” ads. To add to the weirdness, the interviewer looked a lot like someone I had worked with back in the Late Jurassic Period.

I told the interviewer that the creep lurking at the back of the room had shanghaied my friend and me. I repeatedly asked the interviewer to call the police, but he ignored my pleas. He kept chattering away like a wound-up robot, expounding on the requirements for the job and complaining about Obamacare. Then he asked, “If we hire you, will you go to the company picnic?”

(Yikes! I actually was asked that question during an interview, but it wasn’t a picnic; it was a Christmas party. And, yes, I was hired. And, yes, I went.)

I was desperate to ditch both Dewey and the interviewer. One scared me and had a gun and the other seemed insane. Fortunately, stupid Dewey had neglected to confiscate my cell phone. So I went to the ladies’ room and frantically scrolled through my contacts list. Instead of calling 9-1-1, I searched for a certain individual’s phone number. I found it and poked the number.

And then I woke up.

Hello There in Tucson: Part IV

(continued from previous post)


Oops, my error. Hanging up on Ms. Hello Hello was a really dumb move. Why, oh why, did I do that? I guess it was the shock of recognition. I don’t know what I expected, but I never expected her to answer the phone.

Ms. Hello Hello always called during the day, when no one was around. Well, Other Household Member suspected there was a party in progress. Maybe Ms. Hello Hello chugged down a couple margaritas and got up the courage to call us from a friend’s phone. Maybe she figured she could finally speak to a real person. On the other hand, maybe she figured that 9:30 p.m. was a good time to play phone games and annoy the heck out of us.

By Sunday morning, I figured that I didn’t have anything to lose, so I called Bina. On the first try, I got a busy signal. On the second try, I got Bina. I expected her to deny any knowledge of the calls or to hang up on me. However, she seemed willing to hear me out.

I explained that someone apparently had called my house several times from her phone on Saturday night. She hesitated and then asked if I was in Arizona. When I told her I was, she said she had been trying to call her boyfriend in Arizona and guessed that she had dialed a wrong number.

“Three times?” I asked. She hesitated again, so I took the direct approach and said, “When I called your number last night, the woman who has been leaving hello, hello messages on my phone for the last few months answered your phone.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that,” she said. I asked if she had been at a party. “I was at a nightclub.” Okay, so Bina had a cell phone. Some people are a little careless about leaving their cell phones lying around. Maybe Ms. Hello Hello had grabbed the phone and made the calls when Bina was occupied elsewhere.

However, Bina knew that the calls had been made to Arizona. So I was sure she had at least a nodding acquaintance with Ms. Hello Hello. “If you think you might know this person,” I said, “please give her a message from me. Tell her to tell us what she wants or stop calling.”

For a while, there were no more messages from Ms. Hello Hello. However, several months later, there was another, barely audible, “Hello” message from someone who sounded a lot like her. Over the next four or five months, that woman left two or three also barely audible messages. At those times, I did not access *69 in an attempt to trace her phone number. I would have succeeded only in adding more extra charges to my phone bill. I also decided that, if she didn’t have the courtesy to talk to us, I couldn’t be bothered with her. If Ms. Hello Hello wanted something from us, she couldn’t have wanted it that badly.

Over ten years later, her identity and the purpose of those calls remain an unsolved mini-mystery. I never got to talk to Ms. Hello Hello, nor, to my knowledge, did anyone else in the household. Did she want a favor from us, or was she only trying to annoy us—and why? If she wanted something from us, if she had a valid request for help with something, I would have tried to help her.

 And would I recognize her voice if I heard it today? You betcha!