Sorry, wrong number

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Several years ago, J and I lived with another couple in a rented house. The guy was one of my best friends and we worked together building decks. His girlfriend was another friend of mine who I worked with at my second job. We were all intertwined in some fashion, and the house was jokingly called the 'commune'.

It turns out, our phone number was one digit off from a movie theater, so we received plenty of 'wrong number' calls. After a while, we changed the outgoing message on the answering machine to "If you are trying to reach (our four names), please leave a message. If you are trying to reach the movie theater, please learn to dial". Most everyone just hung up when they realized their mistake, but one guy left the stumbling message "uh, um, you learn to dial, b*#ch".

The phone rang one evening when we were all hanging out together. I picked up the phone and in my best imitation of a halting, computerized voice said, "If you need the theater address, please press one. If you are looking for movie times, please press two". I heard the touch tone after the second choice so I launched into "If you want to see Star, Wars, please press one". My roommates were laughing in the background, and at that point I started cracking up and hung up.

The person called back, and it turned out to be my roommate's sister. But ironically, she was trying to reach the theater and not her sister, which made us crack up all over again.

When I got my current cell phone number, I would get calls for "Russ" relatively frequently. I still do once in a while, and it surprises me how many people get irritated or suspicious when you say that they have the wrong number. And for some reason, we are compelled to say "sorry" even though it wasn't our mistake.