A ringing phone

The phone just rang. Whoever was calling hung up before I got to it. We don’t have caller I.D. and I will be wondering , for the rest of the night, “who called”? I don’t know why I have that kind of obsession. If you know me at all, you know that I’m not a huge phone-talking kind of gal. I hate making phone calls of my own, but when you call me that’s a different story. I remember racing to answer the phone as a youth. Wanting to be the first to pick up the phone and sometimes knocking down a sibling in the effort. I was appalled that things didn’t run the same in my husbands family. The phone would ring. . . .. . And nobody moved. What?! Don’t you want to know who’s calling?
And can you imagine my feelings as a college student when the phone would ring? I’m sure it wasn’t often for me, but there was still a thrill in the answering of it. I went on my mission to Oklahoma and have some very fond phone memories. Calls from the district leader -for numbers, zone leader -to encourage me, mission president, even his wife -inviting us to a sleepover and play day. Or the call from a less-active telling us her husband was ready to get baptized.
Then there were the days of dating and engagement. I remember a long late-night conversation with Kannon during a thunderstorm. Our phone calls were truly how we became acquainted and fell in love. Our long-distance engagement of 16 months wouldn’t have been the same without the nightly phone calls.
Two weeks before our wedding I moved out of my apartment and into what would be our first home together. We had finished putting the house together and were chatting on the couch when the phone rang. The phone was down the hall and I jumped up and onto the coffee table, fully intending to land gracefully on the other side, in order to be the one to answer the first phone call in our new home. Things didn’t go as planned and I slipped coming off the table and landed on the side of my foot, tearing a ligament off the top of it. Lying on the floor in agonizing pain, the first words out of my mouth were, “go get the phone!” It was imperative that Kannon answer the phone and find out who was calling. (If you care, it was my mother-in-law, who promptly came over to help and called the stake president who was a podiatrist.) I was in a boot and on crutches till the day before our wedding.

Just today, I yelled at my sweet daughter to come and answer the phone
(my hands were covered in the process of bottling pears). Because heaven forbid the answering machine should pick up!
Benjamin and another boy had some trouble at school a few weeks ago. They had a substitute teacher and as she was busy reading to the class, her cell phone was ringing in her purse. One of the boys in the class must have issues like mine, because his first instinct was to answer her phone for her. Ben wanted to find out what was going on and went to check it out. These actions caused the two boys to lose recess for the next week. What a traumatic experience that was for the boy who just wanted to answer the phone for his teacher. I feel his pain!
I don’t know why I have this strange fixation. You’d think it would be enough to prompt the purchase of a phone plan with caller I.D. But, it’s rare that I don’t get to the phone when I’m home and if it rings when I’m gone and no one leaves a message, well, then I didn’t even know they called, right? So, for now, we’ll shelve this problem and save it for the psychiatrist I will never be able to afford. Until then, happy ringing!