Wrong Number Guy: UPDATE

To read the entire Wrong Number saga, go to these links:
Wrong Number Part 1
Wrong Number Part 2
Wrong Number Part 3

It had been several days since Wrong Number Guy called me, but just when I thought he had finally deleted my number from his phone, he called again.

I was surprised he left a message, though; since that last conversation, he has been pretty good about listening to my outgoing message to see if it’s me or his “little mama,” but I guess he was too high this time to pay attention to the outgoing message. He clearly wasn’t even paying enough attention to hang up the phone.


6/18/2010 3:03 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-18_1503.mp3]

Hey, give me a call, baby. Bye-bye. [More extraneous noise because the idiot forgot to hang up his phone AGAIN]


I almost deleted this message from my phone because it wasn’t interesting enough to blog about, but then this morning, I woke up to find that I had gotten a call and a text from Wrong Number Guy! He’s never texted me before; and the text simply said “call me.” I saw that Wrong Number Guy had left a message, though, and when I listened to it, my jaw dropped.


6/20/2010 12:03 AM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-20_0002.mp3]

I guess Dre told you, don’t pick up the phone because he left his phone in the house with his wife. I guess that’s why you’re not picking up your phone. But you could call the phone back; that’s me texting you to call me back. I don’t have nothing to do with you; I just want to know what’s going on. Because, you know what? I’m not going to let him come down there and pay your bills. He got bills up here. He’s going to pay these bills. He’s going to take care of me — and my child.


Holy moly. Wrong Number Guy has gotten himself into whole mess of trouble, hasn’t he? I kind of want to call back Mrs. Wrong Number Guy and tell her that she needs to say that to the real homewrecker, but I am VERY sure I don’t want to get in the middle of it.

I think I have also figured out why he keeps calling me. I believe when he first programmed this girl’s number into his phone, he put in the wrong digits, so when he selects “Little Mama” from his address book, it rings my phone. If he just returns Little Mama’s call right away, he gets the right number. But if he’s too stupid to leave his phone at home with his wife, I am quite sure he doesn’t have the intelligence quotient to reprogram his phone with the right number.

All stories have a moral, and I think this one has several:

  1. If you’re going to call your skank on the side, listen to the outgoing message and make sure it’s the right skank.
  2. If you have called the wrong number, make sure to edit your address book so that your skank’s real number is in there…otherwise she’ll get pissed when you don’t call her back!
  3. If you are going to go visit your skank, don’t forget to bring your phone, because otherwise your wife will find your skank’s number on there. And then there will be blood.
  4. When you call anyone — skank or no — don’t forget to hang up after you’ve left your message!

This has been a public service announcement.

Wrong Number (part 3 of 3)

(N.B. – Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 before jumping right into this story…)

So there I was, standing in the courtyard of St. Mark’s Church, after a long rehearsal and what seemed like an even longer session of listening to Wrong Number Guy leave these desperate messages for some woman (not me!) on my phone.

I decided to take pity on him and call him back. He at least deserved to know that his messages weren’t getting to the right person.

He picked up. “Why haven’t you been answering your damn phone?” He sounded annoyed.

“I hate to tell you this, but I have no idea who you are. You’ve been leaving messages on my phone for the last couple of days, and I think you have been dialing the wrong number.”

“What?” He thought I was joking. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure this is my number.”

“But I was just texting her!”

“Well, you might have dialed the wrong number by a digit or something. You’ve left about eight or so messages on my voicemail and I just don’t want you to think you’re being ignored by whomever you are really calling.”

He was clearly grasping the concept of a wrong number very slowly, because he kept asking me what I meant. Finally he said, “Oh, okay, I’m sorry,” and hung up.

Mission accomplished, I thought, mentally wiping my hands clean of the whole affair. I walked to my car and started driving home…it had been a late rehearsal, and I was exhausted. I plugged my phone into my car and started listening to my favorite podcasts.

Ten minutes into my drive, my podcast listening was interrupted by a phone call…by Wrong Number Guy! I ignored the call, hoping he would finally listen to the outgoing message and realize that I was not the woman he thought I was. Sure enough, he didn’t leave a message.

I imagined him with his friends at that party.  Did he call the number and leave it on speaker as my outgoing message played, and did they all have a big laugh? I hope so, because that’s what I would have done.

So he finally got the idea, I thought. I hope he got that girl’s real number. I got home and went to sleep.

When I got up that morning, I saw that he had called again, somewhere around 3:00 AM again. No message, though.

Over the next couple of days, I got missed calls from Wrong Number Guy here and there. One day I was sitting in a cafe in Philly when the phone rang and it was Wrong Number Guy again. I decided to pick up the phone.

“This is Maren.”

“Hey, I’m on my way right now.”

“I still have no idea who you are. Why do you keep calling me?”

“Oh it’s you again? I don’t know what the problem is. I think it’s the phone. It’s the phone, because I keep calling the same number, and sometimes it goes to you, and sometimes it goes to her.”

“Um…okay…”

“I think it’s the phone.” This is the most coherent I’ve ever heard him, but he still doesn’t have a very extensive vocabulary, clearly.

I decide to be friendly. “Well, I just think this is all hilarious, because I’m an opera singer, dude. My life does NOT intersect with yours at all.”

“Oh yeah? Where you at? I’ll come to you.”

Uh-oh. “Uh, no, don’t bother. I’m in Philadelphia anyway…why don’t I just hang up and then you can try the number again and hopefully you’ll get the girl you want to talk to?”

“Oh, you don’t have to hang up.”

Is this idiot trying to mack on me? “Uh, yeah, I think I should. If you call again, I’ll just let it ring through to voicemail.”

And then I hung up.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang. It was him. I let it go to voicemail, and this is the message he left:


6/7/2010 3:35 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-07_1535.mp3]

Hey, how you doing, buddy? This is your friend again. Wrong number, right? But how you doing? And…I’ll be talking to you, because this line don’t want to work. All right, you take care, though. Have a nice day. And, and I’m coming to Philly. I like your voice. All right, you take care, though. It keep doing that, it keep doing the same thing, I don’t know what–? Oh, shit, you might be a good-looking friend. No, let me stop there. Bye.


Oh, Wrong Number Guy: thanks for the compliment, but I really would rather you not come to Philly because I don’t want my husband to have to hunt you down for stalking me. Besides that, I don’t think you’re my type. But I am flattered…I think.

He’s called a few more times since then, but that was his last message. I have his number programmed into my phone as “Wrong Number Guy” so I don’t accidentally pick up the line. His calls have become less and less frequent, however, which is definitely a good sign. Let’s hope whatever crossed wires that led to this adventure are uncrossing themselves as we speak.

Epilogue

Wrong Number (part 2 of 3)

To recap (read Part 1 here): I have been getting bizarre messages from some guy who thinks I’m someone else. For the sake of this blog, let’s call him Wrong Number Guy. Our story continues with a barrage of voicemails from this guy, all within a three-hour period, and getting increasingly desperate.

FOR PEOPLE READING ON FACEBOOK OR ANOTHER AGGREGATOR: if you want to hear the sound files, go to http://www.supermaren.com and listen to them there.


The first message of the evening seemed pretty innocuous, just your run-of-the-mill voicemail, really…


6/3/2010 7:45 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_1945.mp3]

Yo, give me a call when you get this message. All right? Bye-bye.


Then — I imagine — he figures if he gets a friend to call, she will pick up. So this message was not from the same number, but from some number listed in North Carolina.


6/3/2010 8:47 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2047.mp3]

Hey, little mama. Uh, Dre was telling me to call you and said that, um, I needed to meet you. Well, if you still need me to meet you, give me a call back. Thank you.


Of course, there is the very distinct possibility that North Carolina Dude is a dealer. It does start sounding fishy the further I get into the pool of messages…

I think this next message is the funniest of all, because Wrong Number Guy forgot to hang up the phone. So even though the bulk of his message is two sentences long, the message runs longer than 4 minutes.


6/3/2010 8:51 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2051.mp3]

Hey, I’m trying to call you. Give me a call back. All right? [Here follows more than 3 minutes of party background noise]


And as soon as the voicemail runs out, he calls again. Desperate much, Wrong Number Guy?


6/3/2010 8:53 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2053.mp3]

Yo, give me a call! I keep trying to call you; you ain’t picking up. [More party noises, but he remembers to hang up this time]


Now his tone of voice gets increasingly frustrated. I think at this point she has started texting him, asking why he hasn’t called her yet.


6/3/2010 9:00 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2100.mp3]

Hey, my man keep calling you, I keep calling you, you ain’t picking up the phone! You talking about you, you don’t want to go through this, I’ve been trying to call you! You gotta pick up the phone! This is my fifth time calling you! You ain’t picking up your phone! I’m in _______ ready to come see you, man! Bye.


…and then, 6 minutes later…


6/3/2010 9:06 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2106.mp3]

Yo, I’m calling you, man, I’m trying to call you, man, it’s like my fifth fucking time. You keep texting me and shit. Pick up your phone. My man’s calling you too, man; he got, he wants to take care of you. All right? Come on. You ain’t picking up your phone. I don’t know what’s, what’s going on with that.


Maybe at this point he realizes that he sounds super desperate and decides to play it cool and wait 30 minutes before calling again.


6/3/2010 9:36 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2136.mp3]

Yo, girl, get off the fucking phone! Girl, what’s wrong with you? You want me to do something for you, you won’t pick up the goddamn phone, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Pick up your goddamn phone.


At this point, judging from the background noise, he is no longer at a party. It sounds like there is a baby in the background, so maybe he’s home? Or maybe he’s at someone else’s house?


6/3/2010 9:52 PM

[audio: http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_2152.mp3]

Yo, this is my seventh time calling you. You want me to do something for you, and you won’t pick up your phone. Come on! What’s wrong, baby? Give me a call, tell me something! All right?


At this point, I was spared another message, because I got out of rehearsal at 10:00 PM and listened to all the messages…rather, I played them on speaker to listen to with a friend, who said, “Dude, you’ve got to give this guy a call back. Someone is going to get in trouble.”

So I did call him back…and I’ll tell you all about it in my next post.

The Wrong Number Guy series continues with Part 3.

Wrong Number (part 1 of 3)

So last week while I was reeling from Angel’s death, I got the most bizarre set of phone messages from some guy whose number originated from New York City. Clearly he thought he was calling someone else…but he just as clearly didn’t listen to my outgoing message, since he still thought my number belonged to the woman he was calling.

I’m not sure I can do the messages justice with too much storytelling, so I am posting them here (with accompanying transcripts because it took me a while to decipher what the heck he was saying in most of these messages!). I am so glad I kept all the messages.

Feel free to leave feedback in the comment section if you think I’ve made a mistake in the transcription. Some of it was really hard to understand.

Also, before I begin, I want to acknowledge that a lot of the content in these messages sound like illicit activity of one sort or another is going on here. For the record, I am but an innocent bystander in all this, caught in some crossed wires somewhere, and, well, if these people were stupid enough to leave suspicious messages on some random person’s phone, then I really don’t feel bad posting it.


6/2/2010 3:00 AM

[audio:http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-02_0300.mp3]

Good morning, what’s up? Give me a call, little mama. I want to spend some money, little mama. You always do me hard. All right.


I thought that message was a fluke, but the next evening, Wrong Number Guy left another message for his “little mama.”


6/3/2010 12:17 AM

[audio:http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_0017.mp3]

Give me a call.  All right? I’m in the bar. Give me a call. All right.


It’s at this point that my imagination started kicking in. What was happening between these two?  I think he was starting to get frustrated. He called this woman, waited for her at the bar, and she never showed up. It’s the next morning, and maybe he’s thinking she’s playing mind games with him, so he starts playing hard to get with her?

N.B. – this is also one of the more difficult messages to transcribe. I’m not really sure he’s very awake when leaving this message.


6/3/2010 9:05 AM

[audio:http://www.supermaren.com/Audio/2010-06-03_0905.mp3]

Man, no more, you might have to wait a couple of days. Because last night, I did ______ you ain’t come, you ain’t come. So I gave it back. You know what I’m saying? I don’t want her to know my business either. And she gonna be _______ing at you, man. So, just give me a couple of days, and I’ll have something for you on the side. All right? All right, I’ll pay you something _______ off. I’m going to get something nice ______ put aside or something. All right.


Clearly the radio silence started getting to him throughout the day, because that evening he left a flurry of messages, all while I was in a three-hour rehearsal. I checked my messages at the end of the rehearsal, and there were eight messages on my phone!

Coming up: what happens when I don’t return messages that aren’t meant for me.

Further Angel Memories

I want to give some nods to some of my fellow bloggers whose lives were also affected by Angel.  They, too, wrote some beautiful tributes to his memory, and I wanted to share them here:

“Angel” on Skydiving for Pearls (a singer in NYC)

“The Man Who Loved Shoes” on The Bicycle Chef (a woman who blogs about her cycling, her cooking, and other Philadelphia-related goings-on)

“In Memory, Angel Oramas” on OperaMouth (another singer in Philadelphia)

I met a lot of people at Angel’s memorial service yesterday who told me that my post really touched them…so I’m hoping these posts will also show how far Angel’s reach really went. He truly touched a myriad of lives.

Stay Tuned

It seems that my post about Angel brought in a whole new wave of readers. I guess that means I have to write something now! Good thing I have a project in the works; I think you’ll like it. Stay tuned.

Itchy

In Memoriam: Angel Oramas

I know I usually use my blog to write about the good things going on in my life, but today I want to pause and remember a friend and colleague who took his own life yesterday.

Angel Oramas was a vibrant tenor who always had something to say about just about anything. When I first met Angel, he was hitching a ride with me to rehearsals of my first Philadelphia Singers concert: Beethoven 9 at the Mann Center in the summer of 2003. He told me so much about the people in the Philadelphia music scene during those car trips — I guess you could call it gossiping, but it was more like he was explaining to me the ins and outs of the community — that I felt so much more comfortable becoming a part of that community.

Oh, he could be a catty gossip, yes. But just behind his very well-constructed wall of perceived rancor lay a gentle, empathetic, loving man who was just as sensitive and self-conscious about his own shortcomings as the rest of us in the arts. Perhaps even more…who can say what exactly led him to give up on life altogether?

But it was those shortcomings that endeared him to me. The main thing that kept running through my mind at opera rehearsal last night (while we were all struggling to focus after hearing the devastating news of his death) was that Angel never was any good at memorizing words. I missed hearing the random syllables or mumbles that came out of his mouth, especially at this early stage of the rehearsal process. He always had every single note spot on, but the words? Nope. And I loved him for that.

He was one of my carolers at Macy’s a few years ago. We had been singing the same Christmas carols over and over for a while, so we were a little punchy…and Angel — who was dyslexic AND who had not sung with our group before — had been struggling with the words of some of the lesser-known carols all day. We got to “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” which got faster and faster as we sang each verse, arriving at the last verse, sung in double time: Johnny wants a pair of skates / Suzy wants a sled…only Angel sang “shed” instead of “sled,” and we all lost it.

Here’s the video (my brother happened to be shooting us at the time on my dinky Canon camera). Verse 3 starts at 0:30. Angel so gracefully took our mirth in stride here, even though I’m sure he was very frustrated at having to learn so much so quickly. His grace under pressure is why I loved him.

If you are reading this on Facebook or in an aggregator and cannot see the video, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9uYto7a-nk

He also served as an essential member of the AGMA negotiating teams for both Philadelphia Singers and Opera Company of Philadelphia, and he was there for me when I got too stressed out with union responsibilities and demands, and he talked me back from the edge when I had mini-breakdowns during those negotiations. That’s why I loved him.

I know there are lots of people out there who were much closer to him than I ever was. But that doesn’t make me feel any less sad. It feels like a big hole has been ripped in my world. Although I have dealt with death before, mostly within my family, I have never had to face suicide so closely. And although I know that there is nothing I could have done to stop him — we were definitely not close enough for him to confide in me about any of his demons — I still have that knee-jerk feeling of guilt, that “if only” thought that I think all of his friends are having.

So, Angel, wherever you are, I hope your demons are vanquished, and that you are finally at peace. May light perpetual shine upon you.

Angel

It’s Always Sunny…er, SNOWY…in Philadelphia

In December, a big winter storm blew through Philadelphia on the second day of the Philadelphia SingersChristmas on Logan Square concert. An email went around to the singers announcing that despite bad weather conditions, the show would still go on. Singers and audience members alike were offered a special group rate at a nearby hotel, and we were cautioned to be careful getting into the city. My friend @ApatheticAlto and I agreed to share a hotel room because we both live quite a ways from the city, and we had to be back in the city the next morning for church.

That night turned out to be lots of fun. The concert was well-attended for blizzard conditions, and after the show a group of us singers went back to the hotel for some dinner and drinks. The next morning ApatheticAlto and I had breakfast at Little Pete’s diner before church.

Two weeks ago, warnings of another winter storm were blanketing the airwaves, and because we were involved in performances over the weekend when the storm was supposed to hit the hardest, ApatheticAlto and I decided to share another hotel room, this time for two nights.

Friday night was fun; going to the hotel bar after our performance and knowing we didn’t have to drive anywhere led to a little overindulgence, the effects of which ApatheticAlto acutely felt the next morning. Nevertheless, we had been invited to a waffle breakfast by some friends only 6 blocks away, so we bundled up and ventured forth into what looked Philadelphia if it had been transported onto the planet Hoth.

Most of the streets had not yet been plowed, and the snow fell quietly as we made our way through the drifts, sometimes walking on a well-salted, shoveled sidewalk, sometimes walking in a plowed street, and then finally giving up and tromping through the knee-deep snow. Once we arrived at our friends’ house, we decided we didn’t want to leave until much later in the day, because the snow was falling steadily, about an inch per hour. Later that afternoon, we found out that the orchestra canceled that night’s concert because the weather was so bad that SEPTA was closed and there was no way for even the orchestra members to get to the concert.

Though we were disappointed by the turn of events (cancellation because of force majeure means we didn’t get paid for the concert, and we still had to pay for two nights at the hotel), we made the best of our situation, and we all went out to dinner at an Italian bistro. I offered to sub for the other alto at ApatheticAlto’s church on Sunday, so I did make at least a little money while I was in town.

Since that storm two weeks ago, Philadelphia hasn’t really been able to dig itself out. Another blizzard found its way to our doorstep Feb. 9-10 (Tuesday and Wednesday), destroying my plans to go down to Baltimore and sing songs from my recital for composition majors at Peabody (I know, that sounds totally boring to you, but it was a big deal for me). It started snowing again last night, and as of the time I’m publishing this post, it hasn’t stopped. The weather people say it’ll be another 4-8 inches, which isn’t very good news in a town that is used to only a couple inches of snow a year. Luckily, my dinky little NJ township suburb has been doing a better job plowing its streets than Philadelphia, but operations seem to have ground to a halt because of the snow.

I don’t remember being as concerned about the snow when I went to school in Boston. Maybe it’s because the winters were always very snow-heavy, and people had learned to adapt. Perhaps I didn’t notice it as much because I didn’t have to drive in the stuff. But I have to say, I’m not much of a snow bunny, and these past two weeks have had both me and Ray pining for Hawaii in a big way.

…And God(dess) Send you a Happy New Year

I know things have been kind of slow around here.  I still have to rebuild my professional site, which is taking forever, plus this time of year is the busiest for us singers. I have been continuing with my situp/pushup/squat challenge, and if you check out my tweets every other day, you’ll see I’m even logging in my progress.

But I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday season, whatever you’re celebrating, and all the best for a happy new year.

In other news, because Christmas also seems to be the season of spammers, and I’ve been getting comment overload from bots wanting to sell me Viagra and/or Cialis, I’ve installed a CAPTCHA application to the comment forms.  Please feel free to continue to comment on my posts (obviously, those of you reading this on Facebook can continue commenting as per usual), but this extra step saves me having to wade through the spam.

Just to Reiterate

Because of my own stupidity, I have managed to wipe TWO WHOLE YEARS of blogging from the face of the earth.  Luckily, nothing I really had to say was all that important, I guess, but I thought some of my observations and reviews might have been helpful to some people.  I suppose I’ll never know.

Luckily, Facebook uploaded all my posts onto its site, so I have at least something to work with.  I might be able to recreate at least the posts that I liked.

In the meantime, onward and upward.  I have to rebuild this blog, my singing website, and my caroling website.  It’ll be slow going, but it’ll get done.