Those Late Phone Calls

When the phone rings at 2:45AM on a weekday, like it did last night, my natural reaction is to curse: "Sonofabitch!". And even though the Nokia tune of my cell phone erupting at that early hour would get me back to the world of the awake people in a split of a second, I usually don't pick it up.

My rationality is that if it is extremely important, like a life or death situation, they'd call me right back again and as many times as necessary until I pick up the phone. At least that's what I would do. If is a wrong number, once they get the voice message, they'd figure out that they've just fucked up the sleep of someone somewhere and would never call back again.

If is a drunk friend, they'll always leave a message talking as loud as they can, like if my cell phone had one of those old answer machines where you can listen to the message as it is delivered. Or maybe I should say like in the movies, when the assassin has the knife ready to cut the jugular of his victim and a message from only God-knows-who either sent that very same killer in a rant of apologies, or in a killing spree that includes taxi drivers, homeless people, graveyard-shift prostitutes, police officers and whoever gets on the way until he's face to face with the author of the message who, of course, is the hero and ends up killing the killer and delivering a happy end to the story.

The other reason why I don't pick up the phone if it rings at that hour, is because I don't have my cell phone on my night table but on my desk, a few steps from my bed. I don't have an alarm clock, but use instead the alarm function in my old Nokia to wake up. If I had the cell phone on the night table, I'm sure one day I'd just turn it off and get back to sleep until someone at my office building notices my absence and calls. Which could easily be weeks. So if the phone rings, I'll have to jump out of bed, take a couple of steps, pick it up and answer it. Therefore the second-call rationality.

Last night it rang until the voice message kicked in -which was like a frikking eternity. Then, maybe twenty seconds later it rang again and I fricked out. I thought that I either had to go and bail some friend out of jail again; or one of my cronies in the underworld was about to warn me that I better get my passport and the stack of one-hundred dollar bills hidden between the cracks of the wooden floor right away, and run like the wind because the Feds are heading my way.

But it was neither one, nor the other. When I picked up the phone with a sharp "Hello!", some guy on the other end of the line was like "Huh?". Keeping my cool I manage to ask who was calling just to get another "Huh" as reply. After another question that male who wrongly dialed my number (867-5309) was like "I hav' the wron' numr". But I was not going to let him off the hook just like that, not before I could squeeze some cursing into his brain: "Who the fuck are you calling motherfucker?!!". "Huh?" -was his last line.

Once I wake up and jump out of bed like that, is impossible for me to go back to sleep immediately. I usually have to lay down in bed for at least forty minutes to an hour, until my tired self takes over my pist-off self and I get back to sleep. But the worse thing is that once the alarm goes off in the morning, signaling that is time to have another wonderful day at the office surrounded by "Stepford Wives" type of co-workers, I'm feeling like if I had just helped myself into bed.

Making an already long Manic Monday, even longer.