When I moved I got a new phone number, pretty normal, right? The first week I had the phone I got a ton of calls. Unfortunately, none of them were for me. Most annoying, they were all collection calls and the people on the other end very rudely did not believe me when I told them they had the wrong number.

For the past seven weeks the calls for this other person have continued. Mostly from one creditor and luckily I think I’ve finally convinced them that this person doesn’t live here. But, this week the calls have gotten weird. Now I’m getting calls from stores that her “order’s in” and calls from some college. But, last night took the cake.

At 2:30AM, yes AM, my phone rang. I answered it and a voice sounding very much like my brothers starts saying “mom”, “mom”. I asked who it was and he replied “Brian” (uh, my brother’s name) like I was the idiot for not knowing who he was. At this point I’m planning the harm I’m going to do to my brother because if he’s calling me at 2:30 in the morning some bad has happened and I’m furious that he would call me to deliver bad news. Dude, if something bad has happened to Mom or Dad get your butt in your car and drive over here to tell me in person. Don’t CALL me and give me the news over the phone where I’ll be left to deal with it alone.

So, as all this is going through my head “Brian” responds with “Is this Janelle Bakers house?” I inform him no and he apologizes and lets me know he’s probably forgot to dial the correct area code. At which point I kindly informed him that his mom had changed her phone number and I’d been getting lots of calls for her.

Afterwards, as I was laying in bed thinking about the whole phone call and pondering the fact that it came in at 2:30 in the morning I realized this kid was probably either in jail or drunk at a bar calling his mom for help. (Of course, I didn’t think about the fact that he obviously hasn’t talked to his mom for a while since he didn’t know she hasn’t had this number for a while.) As I’m laying on bed, I can’t fall back to sleep at this point, I got curious so I got up to check where the call came from — a personal cell phone — at least I know he wasn’t in jail. Hopefully he had another way to get in touch with his mom, and hopefully, if he needed a ride home from some bar he found one.

I wish I would have asked him to ask his mom to pay her bills and to give her creditors her new phone number so they’d leave me alone.

Hope I don’t get any more wake-up calls.

Till later…