Ekidokai

Most people that know me know that I hate phones.

Long ago when AT&T broke up and we could buy or own phones and wireless phones and accessories first came out on the market, I was running Down East Electronics. I had one of the first answering machines available and was having trouble coming up with a good message. A friend did a good Mae West so she made a message for me. After a couple of days I started getting a lot of calls. I came home one day and the upstairs neighbor asked if there was a problem with my phone. He said it never stopped ringing. I had 600 calls that day. It all started when one of the nurses mis dialed and she told her friends and on and on. I was getting requests for recordings and information from all over the world. I had created a monster.

Now this was a problem so I decided I had to do something quick. I came up with the perfect idea. I put on my outgoing message a busy signal. This is what would happen. You would call my number and it would ring twice and then the busy signal would start. after a minute it would beep and you could leave a message if you were smart enough to stay on the line after the busy signal started. The calls quickly slowed down and then someone came out with a cassette tape with prerecorded messages and my troubles were over. This is how much of my life has gone.

So I do have reasons for disliking phones. I do like gadgets though, so I have several computer based phones. Skype and the like.

I get a call around 10PM tonight. I miss the call because I can't get the phone open quick enough. I jump on Google phone and dial the number back. I get a strange voice on the other end...

Person: "Hello"

Me: "Hello"

Person: "Who is this?"

Me: "I'm returning your call, you just called me and I didn't pick it up quick enough."

Person: "Mike?"

Me: "Yeah who else would it be?"

Person: "This is Vinny, how did you find me?"

Me: "Well you called me first. Vinny who?"

Vin: "Vin from Middletown."

Me: "Holy crap! What did you want?"

Vin: "I didn't call you."

Me: "Is this your number? ___-___?

Vin: "Yes but I'm in Eritrea"

Me: "Where the hell is that? I have not seen or heard from you since I left Middletown back in 78."

So I connected up with a long lost best friend and talked for several hours catching up. Still don't know where Eritrea is but I will find out soon as now I have his email. No wonder I could never find him when I did searches.

Note to self. When using these computer phones make sure you dial the area code first (207) or it will randomly pick one.