People who phone my house and get the answering machine get an odd message. In it, I list the things which my house isn't, which includes hotels, airlines and scrap yards. This might seem very strange, and even overly specific, but there is a reason for each one of them.
The hotel one is simple, a woman left a message on my machine asking to book a room for a weekend, giving a surprisingly detailed amount of information in the message. I didn't use the information for any ill purpose, of course, but I don't know what happened with the woman's room, since I got the message a bit late to return her call. I hope she was able to find a room.
The airline is a relic from when I lived in Saskatoon, and regularly received calls from a woman asking if my apartment at the time was WestJet. The apartment obviously couldn't fit a jet in there, because it was small and very far from any airports. But on a monthly basis, this woman would call my house, ask for WestJet, or even sometimes a specific person who worked for WestJet. Every time, she was disappointed, for I have never worked for any airline in my life. It was so regular that I would know that it was time to pay the bills based on when this confused woman would call.
The scrap yard was a more recent one, though it took an odd turn when the man phoning actually started arguing with me about whether or not my house had any scrap available. He thought, somehow that it was all an elaborate joke, rather than a mistake on his end of the line. He was eventually convinced that no scrap could be found in my modest home with its tiny yard, and presumably found the people he was looking for initially.
Everyone has gotten calls from people dialing the wrong number, or has dialed the wrong number themselves. I'm not innocent, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who have been confused when I have sent a text clearly meant for someone else. That's fine, but in each of the cases above, it was marked by a certain insistence that the wrong number was right after all. Whether it's just leaving a message on an unfamiliar answering machine or just arguing with the person on the line, there was this belief that somehow my small home was something much grander, or at least a place with a furnished guest room.
I bring this all up because I'm strangely excited to add more destinations to my answering machine roll call, and I believe that there's a very good chance this will happen very soon. With the introduction of ten digit dialing, once people get over the distraction of having to dial an area code for local calls, they will begin dialing the wrong area code for local calls. I know I will, and I'll feel a bit dim every time the phone is answered by someone I didn't intend on calling. So, at some point, I am going to get an exciting array of people insisting they dialed correctly, demanding I do various things, like perhaps book dinner reservations or ask how late my house is open. As much as I might seem to complain, at least on the machine, for some bizarre reason I actually enjoy this, and only make my strange message as a service to people. So it will be fun to see just what kind of wrong numbers a new area code brings.
