I Need A Little Sympathy.

[hazeablaze]

I have my period so my hair sits atop my skull like a pile of rancid meat, then the phone rings and of course it’s a robot introducing herself as Lisa and inquiring about “your credit card” and click goes my old desk telephone, landline intimacy breached. I’ve only given this number to 15 people or something yet the cranks and people who don’t know or understand the function of voicemail roll in. Three different people in Ireland left me 30 voicemails demonstrating this confusion in action, half or so of them while I was in California. (Fortunately, I left the landline ringer off while I was gone because otherwise these alleged ancestors of mine-no, I was swapped at birth-no, favor the Finnish and French half of you, keep that the focus- would have plagued the friend who was staying at my place in real time.) Thirty messages on voicemail which, as it turns out, is not a very useful place to say:

Shannon?

Shannon???

Shannon?!?!

Shannon???

Shannon!!!

Shannon?

on message after message when the voicemail message makes use of one name and one name only: Lisa, the non-robot. So why were you three chuckleheads so confused as to a. why a human voice wasn’t responding to your utterances on an automated voicemail messaging system? or b. why Shannon wasn’t answering when she hadn’t answered the phone-I mean, when it clearly wasn’t even her phone number?

C. Why am I even spelling this out?