Top Signs of 2002
I found these scrawled on scraps of paper in my coat pocket today:
"Lazy Layers Should Be Identified --Cull Them As Soon As They Stop Producing"
--Agricultural Extension sign in Forest Lake
"Welcome to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Home of the World's First Neurologist in Space"
--Sign at the Sault Ste Marie city limits
Wrong Number
I don't know if the guy was actually old. I sort of had the impression that he was, but it wasn't a particularly strong impression. For some reason, I guess, I liked to imagine him as old, but there really wasn't anything in his voice that pushed me to that conclusion. It was a persistant wrong number, is what it was, almost a long-standing comedy routine between the two of us, always between midnight and one a.m., and perhaps it was his comical inability to address the miscommunication that led me to conclude that he was an old man, befuddled by technology. The truth, though, is that he actually sounded younger, like someone very close to my own age.
The routine would always start with the same informal misunderstanding:
"Hi, Jerry? Is Verna around?"
"This isn't Jerry. And there is no Verna." Or, eventually: "Wrong again." There were all sorts of variants over time. This went on, off and on, for over a year. Years, possibly.
Always he would chuckle, an exhausted sound. I inferred from the beginning too many cigarettes, a drinking problem, loneliness. At any rate, no Jerry, no Verna. Sorry, wrong number.
"It's a phone thing," he'd say. "I'm sorry. This fucking phone. It's a programmed number, but I must have done something wrong. I can't seem to straighten it out, no matter what I do."
"Yes," I'd say. "No problem."
There were months when it seemed like I didn't get any other phone calls. I eventually moved across town, got a new phone number. It's been a long time now, actually, quite a few years. The other night at eight o'clock the phone rang and I picked it up.
"Jerry?" a woman's voice asked.
"No," I said. "Sorry."
"Who's this?" she asked, and I gave her my first name.
"Will you please ask him to call Verna at work?" she said.
5:47:03 PM 
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