Screechwood 4-5789

...you can call me up and leave your hate any old time.

Luckily for Rob this story has a benign conclusion. The first few weeks I had a cel phone, I had an interesting exchange with a girl who called me looking for one of her friends. I explained that this was now my number, not hers - sorry about that. It seemed to be fine until a couple of days later:

Hello, says I.
"Yo," says some guy I've never heard before. "Put on X."
I'm sorry, I don't know X.
"This is her number."
Perhaps it was, but it's been mine for a couple of weeks now. I'm sorry.
"Yo - I know she's there, man. You better put her on."
Click, says I.

Ring, says my new phone. And continues to say until my voicemail takes it. The mail consists of a guy threatening to come over unless X (now called by her pet name, "two-timing b****") calls him back in five minutes. Five minutes and ten seconds later, the phone rings again and I answer it by saying, "If you want her to call you back so badly, get her new number. I have nothing to do with this. I want nothing to do with this." Click.

Small wonder that X didn't give out her new number to certain parties.

More amusingly, for almost a year I had a running set of conversations with a group of collection agents looking for someone who'd been welching on bills and scattering bad checks - apparently with my phone number written under the address. It was sad to have to explain that this number was as bogus as the number after "$". (No amount of searching online turned up this mystery lady, though some of the results were odd.)