Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Baby, I've Got Your Number
"WHY DIDN'T YOU TRIM MY BUSH?!"
Unless you are currently employed in a salon specializing in the maintenance and upkeep of lady business, you've probably been lucky enough to avoid hearing the above sentence ever being uttered. Of course, if you happen to live in our apartment, you'd hear this phrase, or variations on it, all the damn time.
Allow me to explain...No, J and I are not running an underground bikini waxing joint out of our place (I mean, we've discussed it, but the numbers just don't work). We simply have a phone number which is apparently very similar to the phone number of Roberto, World's Laziest Gardener/Landscape Artist.
It started, as most absurd situations do, inoccuously enough. We'd occasionally get a voice mail saying something like, "Hey, Roberto, you didn't come by this week." We shrugged it off at first. But the calls got more frequent.
Roberto, it seemed, had gotten lazier.
And the calls got wayyyy more entertaining.
You know how, in Swingers, Mike keeps leaving increasingly weird/desperate voice mail messages for this girl he just met, basically carrying out the entire life cycle of a relationship with her answering machine? That's sort of what coming home after a day out and checking our messages was like for us.
"Roberto, are you coming?"
"Roberto, where ARE you?!"
"Roberto, I'm getting upset; please call."
"Roberto baby, you're so money, and you don't even know it." [Okay, maybe that one didn't happen.]
"You dumb lazy bastard, where the hell are you? You're fired!"
And...scene.
Sometimes, the messages were kind of creative:
"[Sarcastically] Thanks soooo much for coming to mow the lawn. [Normally] This grass is ridiculous. All I need are some sheep, and I'd have a pasture! Ass!"
Personally, though, the old ladies were my favorite, because they managed the perfect balance of rudeness and propriety. Par example:
"Roberto? It's Gladys. I just wanted to inform you that I have retained a NEW gardener. So don't come again! Not like you ever did before!"
Of course, the plaintive wail of "why didn't you trim my bush?!" was the best message of all. And she called a lot. Each time, it reduced us to giggles, because we are apparently 14. (Lest you think we're jerks, most of the people who called had unlisted phone numbers, so I couldn't call them back. And also, Roberto didn't die or anything, because we'd sometimes get messages wherein people would reference jobs he did for them last week. So, not dead. Just super lazy.)
We're not sure if Roberto: a) had a similar number to ours, or b) was just so incredibly lazy, he was actually giving out the wrong number. Either way, we couldn't be bothered with that mystery, because we recently started getting harrassing collectors' calls for Iris. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IRIS, PAY YOUR DAMN BILLS! You'd probably be shocked to find out that when a bill collector calls looking for a woman named Iris, and you ARE a woman, but claim not to be Iris, the bill collectors don't believe you. Surprised? So was I!
Ugh.
Thanks a lot, universe. If this is some sort of karmic repayment for prank calling all three "Buttmans" in the phone book when I was 9, then....well played.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
_300.jpg)
16 comments:
You get much better wrong number calls than I get. I used to get hassled by a collection agency that thought my name was George Scott and owed a bundle on the satellite dish I had ordered.
Whenever a driver for a local trucking company is late, we get a nasty message on our machine. Their number is one off from ours. It only happens about every three or four months, so it's not so bad.
For a while we also got calls from a nursing home with a nurse asking Judy to call back about her mother. No other identifying details. Those made me feel really bad. I hope they had other numbers to call to reach Judy because I had no way to contact her or the nursing home.
I once wrote about messages me and my old roommate used to get from increasingly frail-sounding old people looking for a woman named "Charlotte Kakes." We found her in the phone book and it turns out her number was really our number.
Since you can't really have much fun with people who haven't got much time left, I wish we had been getting Roberto's calls instead!
"Why didn't you trim my bush?" Hahaha! Awesome.
That is hilarious. My friend gets calls for a catering company and some other family all the time. She doesn't even answer her phone most of the time anymore because she knows it's not for her.
That's hilarious. I used to get calls in college at 2am from some guy who was trying to reach his exgirlfriend weeping. Probably about once a week. He never believed that he had the wrong number...and always told me to take a message. Eventually I stopped answering.
I have been divorced from The World's Stupidest Ex-Husband (yes, that's his real name) for 4 years. When we first separated, I received many, many late night phone calls from young, drunk girls looking for him. Sadly, that was preferable to the calls I am getting now: for the Ex's father, who apparently swindled some senior citizens out of their life savings. (Great family, huh?) Being elderly, sometimes they don't hear so well, so I am forced to scream into the phone, whereupon I am told "don't you raise your voice to me, little missy!" AND (oh yeah, it gets better) the man is DEAD, so I'm normally screaming, "HE'S DEAD! HE'S BEEN DEAD FOR A YEAR! AND I BARELY KNEW THE MAN ANYWAY! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP CALLING ME!" Not that they believe me. Ah, good times . . .
That is way better than the wrong numbers I get. Although I did get one from a guy telling me that he had fun the other night and my butt looks awesome. Thanks! My husband was not as amused.
You should make a new outgoing message. Something like, "If this is for Roberto, he says you need to trim your own bush from now on."
Snicker. The Buttmans.
My sister and I used to prank call what we now know is a strip club, because it was called The Green Frog (Seriously, I am not making this up) and, on the side of the building, declared in bright green paint that it employed "26 Frogettes". We thought it was hi-larious to call and ask them if they were hiring. WTF?
This reminds me of the message that was left on my husband's answering machine a few years ago. Metalia, do you remember?
An old lady apparently thought that she was leaving a message for her daughter (she may have been slightly deaf) wherein she gave a long detailed description of her day's activities. This in it of itself is not so weird. Except that her day consisted of a trip to the doctor where he told her that she should resolve her bowl issues with an enema. Now, what we did not need to here next was a play by play of the insertion of this enema... but apparently she thought otherwise. (By the way, the whole enema thing did not go so well for her. Just in case you were wondering). Needless to say, my husband was both grossed out but also extremely giddy after listening to it. He played it a couple of hundered times. (He was 17 at the time but I beleive that he would have done the same thing if this happened yesterday). It was a love hate relationship- he would practically vomit when he listened to it but he couldn't stop himself. Metalia, sort of how you felt about the Weakest Link chick- "I love her, I hate her..."
I had to eventually erase it since it was coming between us. It was either me or the enema message.
I guess it's a good thing that this old lady is not one of Roberto's clients...she would be leaving you messages giving detailed accounts of his lack of bush trimming. Ew!
That is hilarious! I've only had my current phone number for a couple of years, and haven't had any really intesting wrong numbers. Though I did have a collection agency calling for Taniqua (sp?) for a while. I kept changing my outgoing message to clue in the message leaver (it was the same girl every time) but she never caught on, so I finally recorded an incredibly frustrated "LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR LIZ IF YOU ARE CALLING FOR LIZ! DO NOT LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR TANIQUA! THIS IS NOT HER NUMBER! STOP LEAVING ME HER MESSAGES!" Yes, I screamed the whole thing. The messages stopped a couple of days later. Then of course I got several messages from my best friend claiming to be a variety of people looking for Taniqua. "Taniqua, this is your doctor's office. We've got the results of your syphillis test." At least his were creative.
Years ago, I got several calls in one evening (which I kept answering for some reason--I believe it was before caller ID) from a woman who was convinced that I was the "hospital" her boyfriend was in. Apparently she had reason to distrust him, and she kept calling back, convinced he was there and I was just lying, I guess. She just kept saying "Well, this is the number he gave me" and I kept saying "Well, he gave you the wrong number then" and it went on and on until I let fly with the profanity and slammed the phone down on her. Really, was it beyond her imagination to think she'd jotted the number down wrong or something?
I think it's pretty obvious that Roberto is some sort of criminal mastermind and/or Batman.
Great blog by the way. Love it.
I like R's suggestion of changing your outgoing message to include a note to the Roberto seekers.
I used to get calls from collection agencies all the time for someone named Sarah with the same last name as me. They always sounded suspicious when I swore my name was not Sarah. This has actually happened at two different phone numbers now. (They must be calling any "S. [MyLastName]" listings in the phone book to try to track her down.) Pay your dang bills, Sarah!
Like Stefanie, we are mercilessly hounded by collection agencies desperately seeking Jack Wells, a man who is deeply in debt, apparently.
Oh, Roberto.
I'm sure it's not as funny for you, but I find this to be hilarious! I often get phone calls late at night from a number I don't recognize (and by late, I mean 4AM). I don't answer them and instead lay there and get really worked up about whatever asshole is calling me at 4AM ON A WEEKNIGHT WHEN I HAVE TO WORK! Ha. I started to return the calls (the number comes up on my cell) on my way to the gym the next morning. At 6:45. The woman would answer, and be all tired and out of it, but she finally stopped calling!
No one calls me. Ever. Not even wrong numbers. Not even people, family members, that I've given my number to. Repeatedly. I've read this post and all these comments over and over again. So jealous. What I wouldn't give for one wrong number.
Alone...so...very....alone...
Darren -- See, now that you've given me the name, all I'm picturing is this guy...
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1265/Mptv/1265/5353_0008.jpg.html?path=pgallery&path_key=Scott,%20George%20C.
...sitting in his living room, screening calls, and laughing his ass off as he watches his 3,475 new satellite channels.
Sparkling Cipher -- We've gotten Judy-esque calls too; if it's that important, why do they never leave contact information??
Nabbalicious -- We've tried to look up our number and see if it's dually assigned to Roberto as well, but we didn't see anything to suggest that. It's a mystery...I like to call it The Mystery of Roberto and the Unkempt Bush.
Paisley -- Thanks! You know, sometimes we just look at the caller ID when it says "unknown number" and we're like, "Good God, what now?!" It's never anything normal.
Christine -- Is it wrong that I find that extremely funny?
Shawnee -- Ha! Crotchety old people are awesome.
R -- Best idea ever. But what would my Grandma think when she calls?
GG -- I already left you a comment, telling you how I feel about The Green Frog (i.e., disturbed), but now I have another question. If there are 26 Froggettes, who is the titular Green Frog? Is he their frog pimp? I need answers!
Anon -- I DIED from that story when it first happened; I totally forgot about it until now. That was the most nauseating message ever left in the history of voice mail.
Liz -- I would honestly pay good money to hear your old outgoing "Taniqua" message.
Jon -- Batman!! Why didn't I think of that?! That's genius. And thanks so much!
Stefanie -- Aren't they rude? I'm sure they deal with the real people denying who they are all the time, but still.
Jonniker --Hee! So you share our pain, as well...are they mean to you, too?
Miss Peach -- Whoa, that's totally worse; at least these people only call us during the day/early evening. I absolutely LOVE the way you resolved the matter! :)
Anonymous -- Roberto, is that you?!
Post a Comment