The Three A.M. Caller

Ever since we got our new phone number in September we have received multiple calls every second morning. They start about at 3:00 am (CDST) and keep coming for 20 or 30 minutes.

At first we were determined to do something about it. Ren *69ed early on and got a response from someone who said he knew nothing; it seemed to be just an ordinary residential number. I personally have no reason to think that anyone is insane enough to call so regularly for such a long time. Additionally there is an eerie silence when you pick up the line, unlike anything you'd hear on a live end.

According to MTS (the friendly, do-it-yourself phone company), in order to end this torture we need to collect the calls using a code I now forget—star-something-something. As harassed customers we are required to log four to six annoying calls, with date and time, and report them to our nearest community police office. Aside from being completely inconvenient, it seemed to me that the phone company could have just as easily taken my word and blocked the number.

Anyhow, bureaucracy will be what it will be. Many people prefer a layer of rules and procedures over simple cures—human nature I suppose. I'm not one of them; but, being a good sport, I was willing to play the game to a point. Ren collected a useable set of logged calls, and it was my job to bring 'em in. But I somehow managed to lose the list. Then she and I collaborated on another log, and I lost that one too. After that we all just started to accept the 3 o'clock phone call from nowhere as a part of life.

I really enjoy getting the call if it comes when I get home from a night of ripping it up. I imagine that it's the future calling, and they want to know what it was like to be me and drunk at three in the morning. Maybe I've become some sort of cult figure to them, or maybe it's a psychology experiment by some brilliant and sadistic high school student in 2210. In any case, the call from beyond gets an earful of me belting Stevie Wonder or Black Sabbath, or a foul-mouthed, raving commentary on a random topic. Take that future!

But truth be told, the 3 am call is still mostly a drag. We often turn off the ringer on the upstairs phone to avoid it, then forget to turn it back on and miss calls. Or, you know, it's just that time of night when you are at that certain sleep stage where you're easily woken, but still asleep—and whammo, you get an aural rock-shocker.

Whatever, I guess the occasional rude awakening is less of a problem for me than the hassle of having this ghost in the machine blocked. Apparently everyone else here is equally lazy about the situation.