Charlyn’s Web

Ring!

Groggily I looked up at the clock. What? 6:50 AM? (Shut up! I was still sleeping!)

Ring!

Who could that be? My friend who was coming to visit today calling to cancel? So early? The Col.’s work? The Col. himself was trying to sleep beside me, finally getting a bit after another hard night of not sleeping.

Ring!

I decided I had better get it. I de-glued myself from the bed and raced for the phone.

“Hello?” Silence.

Not a telemarketer so early? Part of my foggy brain said hang up! but silly me said again- “hello!?”

“Bonjour?”

Oh geez!

Background- when we first moved here we would get early morning phone calls from French speaking people.

“Parlez-vous Francaise?”

Heck no! Call someone who does. Oh, maybe not.

We’d try to help them out, explain they had the wrong number. If often sounded like an elderly person or perhaps a soused person. They would get so confused- how had they got this English only speaking Yank? It was odd; often being the same time of day- before 7 in the morning. We finally decided that maybe there was a radio show or ad that aired about the same time every day and people were responding to it? We puzzled about it- where were these French speakers calling from anyway? Finally, inspiration struck and we looked up the area code for Quebec, Canada. Bingo! Rearrange the numbers just a bit and you have our area code. Then the calls slowed down and stopped- we thought maybe the ad had stopped being aired? Or maybe the drunk old people stopped responding to it?

But this morning, she (it was usually a “she”) was back. And rude too! I explained she had reached the United States and she hung up on me. No ‘pardon me’! Harrumph.

What a way to start the jour.