wrong number – The Adventures of Supermaren

June 20, 2010March 31, 2011

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:

If you’re going to call your skank on the side, listen to the outgoing message and make sure it’s the right skank.
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!
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.
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.

June 15, 2010March 31, 2011

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

June 14, 2010March 31, 2011

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.

June 13, 2010March 31, 2011

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.