Strange Conversations with Strangers

This morning Lexi woke up with a fever.

On an ordinary Sunday, this wouldn't throw too big a wrench in the works, but today happened to not be an ordinary Sunday.  Chris and I were both scheduled to teach, and since he was going to be teaching adults and I was going to be teaching 4 & 5 year olds, it was pretty obvious which lesson was going to be easier for a last-minute substitute to put together.  (The ease of convincing a last-minute substitute to teach 4 & 5 year olds is something entirely different, by the way.)

So I started down the list of willing substitutes and promptly discovered that there aren't a lot of people who answer their phone at 8:00 on a Sunday morning.  After hanging up on several voicemails and answering machines, I finally got through to someone who didn't already have a class to teach.

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief and putting away the phone list, the phone rang.

Me: "Hello?"

Caller: "Did someone just call my house?"

Me: "Who is this?"

Caller: "Who is this?"

Me: "This is Allison Ebert."

Caller: "Did you call my house?"

Me: "I've been making a lot of phone calls this morning, so I may have.  Who is this?"

Caller: "Did you call me?"

Me: "I'm sorry, I really have no idea.  I don't have Caller ID, so unless you tell me who you are, I can't tell you if I called you or not."

Caller: "Well, I'll give you a phone number.  555-5555.  Did you call me?"

Me: "Okay, that doesn't help.  I didn't memorize all the numbers I called.  If you could tell me who you are, I'll be happy to tell you if I tried calling you or not."

Caller: "I'm not telling you my name."

Somehow we finally got off the phone.

Without her ever telling me her name.

As much as I'd like to apologize for giving this anonymous paranoid phone police lady a complex on what might have otherwise been a very pleasant Sunday morning, I'm too entertained by the bloggability of our conversation.