Wrong Number

Yesterday morning, the phone rang.  Normally I don't answer if it’s not a number I recognize.  I figure the phone is here for my convenience, not theirs, so yes, I’m totes a screener.  It was not a number I recognized, but it looked like it might be a cell phone in our area code, so I answered.

“Hello?” I answered, all delightful and cheery, as usual.

“Yes, I’m looking for an estate sale.” 

“I think you must have the wrong number,” I replied, because, well, I was not having an estate sale.  Besides that, even if I were, no one ever buys my crap.  Other people can sell a CVS bag full of left sandals, but I still have a large-screen TV and a kelly green recliner in my basement storage room.

Indignant, the caller insisted, “but it says in the paper!”  Then I heard someone in the background mumble something about getting the numbers mixed up.  “Oh, no, you’re right.  Sorry,” she said before she hung up.

I was tempted to call her back just so I could hear someone say “you’re right” again.  I had started to doubt myself.  Had I forgotten that today was indeed the day I planned to sell all my earthly possessions even though I am very much not-dead?

I’m used to getting wrong number phone calls from people looking for a local orthopedic surgeon’s office.  Alas, I am not qualified to be an orthopedic surgeon.  Every time I look at an xray screen, be it of a twisted ankle or a wayward elbow, I half expect someone to softly whisper, “and there’s the heartbeat!” 

I just wanna confirm my appointment
with someone who has no idea what I'm talking about.

More than once I have come home to some old person growling on my answering machine about how “I don’t even know what that message is supposed to mean!”  That’s because it’s a private home machine with my precious children’s voices on the outgoing message, not an answering service patiently awaiting the call regarding your bum hip.  I have received so many of these phone calls that I’m considering asking to be put on the payroll at the surgeon’s office.  When I answer a live call, I always kindly tell them that the number they’re looking for is (insert official-sounding phone number here.)    

So if you call my home phone and I don’t answer, it’s probably because the doctor’s office is closed.  Or I’m looking for all my lefties to put on CraigsList.