Phone calls

We've been receiving some interesting phone calls lately. Some have no one on the other end (this happens when either one of us answers the phone, so I can't blame it on my hubby's latest girl friend (a joke)), some are this person who kinda squeals something in another language with sounds of kids in the background, and one just the other day was a man speaking in Spanish until he said my full name and then continued in Spanish.

Yes these calls are annoying, but at the same time it's fun. I've yet to pull the "Tracy's dead -- didn't you know?" trick on someone calling for Tracy, but when I feel up to it, I'll play along with telemarketers who cannot pronounce my name correctly or I'll just stay on the line while the person's fumbling with things in the background wondering why the person they called isn't saying anything.

We got one of the "no one's on the other line" phone calls the other night. I answered it with a loud, "HELLO?" I was trying to sound forthright. There was static on the other end. So I started whispering to whomever (could be a poltergeist -- wouldn't that be interesting?):

"Hello person who never says anything on the phone. Whhhhyyyyy must you call? Who are you?"

My husband looked at me like I was off my rocker and said, "Who is it?"

"Okay then. Goodbye to you too. Thanks for hanging up on meeeeee."

I looked at him and said it was no one.

The other night when the Spanish talking guy called, I did my normal routine of just staying on the line. There was a long pause before he started talking. When it was in Spanish, I was like, oh no. First all the mail in Spanish, now phone calls? I don't speak Spanish! I figured it was for my husband. He speaks Spanish. Then I heard my name. I told my mom about this and she said it was a recording. I'm not so sure. Maybe I got a Spanish speaking mob after me?

At least I'm a bit better with the phone. I used to just hang up on people if they paused for more than a few seconds before they started talking. I probably hung up on a lot of people we actually knew. If you were calling me, then I thought you should already be prepared to say what you had to say. And if I answered the phone and the call was for my husband, it shouldn't be much of a thought process to figure who the female was who was answering the phone. And vice versa.

My husband, on the other hand, is way too polite to telemarketers. We still manage to get some calls from people doing surveys and trying to sell the newspaper even though I thought they couldn't call us since we're on the "do not call" list. One time he actually participated in a survey. When he wants to end the call, instead of hanging up on them like I do, he politely tells them he's not interested. That just leads to the person trying to talk him into becoming interested, and he politely turns them down again. At some point someone's got to give up.