Phone Manner

I'm thrilled that in my two days as intern at Theatre Row, I haven't answered a telephone once. Not that I haven't tried, but Theatre Row has these supercharged multi-line telephones that I can't figure out for the life of me. Every time I answered, the line would be dead, but I guess that nobody was really calling for me anyway, so I can't say that it mattered. I'm just proud of myself for answering the phone in the first place....

Back in third grade, my friends and I were pretty much given free reign over the school after school. I guess the adults knew that we were there, but since we weren't in high school yet, they trusted us not to kill each other. So we'd run around the classrooms, write whatever dirty words we knew on the blackboard (always write left-handed, so no one would know it was you if you got caught), and, of course, crank call each other on that most sacrosanct of not-a-toys — the intraschool phones. This was unthinkable stuff back in the third grade; the phone was even more the teachers' domain than were those J.L. Hammett pens with the blue ink on one end and red ink on the other. But alas, soon we grew up. Or at least I did.

Truth is, I never really felt any need to play with, or what the heck, even use, the telephone. In eighth grade, a few of us yearbook folk were working late in Mrs. Pirraglia's room and, out of some sick habit, I picked it up. And then this thought rushed over me — I'm not supposed to be talking on the teachers' phone — and I whispered to Aneesa, "What do I say???"

Aneesa: "Uh, hello?"

Duh.

So now I'm trying to break that habit. I let the answering machine get the phone at home, and I wouldn't answer my loaner phones at Sparknotes either. Unfortunately, that makes me look like a pussy who won't pick up a harmless phone, and since I want to turn over a new leaf at this job-like job, when that uberphone rang the first time, I hesitated... and then I picked it up.

Dial tone.

Over the next seven or eight times that the phone rang, I playing secretary and pushing all manner of extraneous phone buttons before, during, and after these frustrated calls. Nothing. I think maybe it's God trying to tell me something.