Waiting for a call
This morning, shortly after 5am a phone starts ringing in our house. It's not the usual ring of the kitchen phone or the chirping warble of the cordless phones strategically scattered from room to room. Rather, it's an alarming tone that my wife has inexplicably set to indicate when her sister is calling her cellular phone.
No matter how long that we've been up, and regardless of the fact that the phone hasn't jangled us out of our sleep, a ringing telephone before daylight always evokes alarm in our household.
"Who could be calling us at this time of morning?" Trepidation tinges the unspoken question.
Not once to date has someone called our house prior to daybreak to announce that we've won the lottery or that they saw our name on the state comptroller's list of people that Texas owed money. Good news always waits until after coffee.
No ... when the phone rings at our house - after we kill the lights and prior to dawn - someone in the family is dead, dying or basking in the glow of ambulance strobes.
With a worried glance at me, my wife grabbed her cell phone and immediately proceded past the obligatory greetings to the point of the call ... which I as yet don't know.
The obvious relaxation of her shoulders and halt to her pacing indicated that nobody was bleeding their last, but the conspiratorial tones that followed only deepened the mystery. Expectant glances and my attempts to meet her eyes failed to produce an answer to relieve my curiosity. One thing I do know, when women talk in those tones, some man somewhere has screwed up. The fact that the call couldn't wait for daylight means whoever he is, he has somehow offended the great Sisterhood of Women - and as a man myself, I'd better lay low lest I get caught in his undertow by association and swept out into the sea of outrage.
I was already late for the door to get to work, so with a hurried peck on the cheek that wasn't occupied with the phone, I left- echoes of a promise to call me swirling behind as I stepped into the pensive predawn air.
No matter how long that we've been up, and regardless of the fact that the phone hasn't jangled us out of our sleep, a ringing telephone before daylight always evokes alarm in our household.
"Who could be calling us at this time of morning?" Trepidation tinges the unspoken question.
Not once to date has someone called our house prior to daybreak to announce that we've won the lottery or that they saw our name on the state comptroller's list of people that Texas owed money. Good news always waits until after coffee.
No ... when the phone rings at our house - after we kill the lights and prior to dawn - someone in the family is dead, dying or basking in the glow of ambulance strobes.
With a worried glance at me, my wife grabbed her cell phone and immediately proceded past the obligatory greetings to the point of the call ... which I as yet don't know.
The obvious relaxation of her shoulders and halt to her pacing indicated that nobody was bleeding their last, but the conspiratorial tones that followed only deepened the mystery. Expectant glances and my attempts to meet her eyes failed to produce an answer to relieve my curiosity. One thing I do know, when women talk in those tones, some man somewhere has screwed up. The fact that the call couldn't wait for daylight means whoever he is, he has somehow offended the great Sisterhood of Women - and as a man myself, I'd better lay low lest I get caught in his undertow by association and swept out into the sea of outrage.
I was already late for the door to get to work, so with a hurried peck on the cheek that wasn't occupied with the phone, I left- echoes of a promise to call me swirling behind as I stepped into the pensive predawn air.
posted by HeadCheese at Tuesday, August 24, 2004
2 Comments:
Oooh, good story - I can't wait to hear the ending. Good luck ;-)
Alas, you won't be hearing this story ... at least not yet. I finally got "the call" and the story, and it's one I'm not at liberty to repeat until it shakes out. There are too many familial ramifications.
Sigh ... you can file it in the cabinet under "men are pigs" if you like, though.
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