Disclaimer: I don't own Phil of the Future, but at least I'm not in deep dung like the H. G. Wells' Astronauts' quarterback Longfellow.

•BEEP •

Bruno Longfellow! I'm so insulted I could just spit! Such language, and from you! Does your mother know that you use potty language? I don't care if you did get this cell phone number off the boys' bathroom wall, that's no excuse for the message you left. I've never been so embarrassed in all my life! I think I'll play this back for your mother and father and see if they agree with me. You're a bad, bad boy and I'm only glad that I grabbed by daughter's cell phone by mistake, so Keely didn't have to hear this from you. Expect to be apologizing to lots of people, Bruno. I'll see you later.

•BEEP •

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Boris Yeltsin had a couple of questions about this BEEP. You might, too, so I thought I share my answer to him:

It's from the opening of "Where's the Wizrd?"

"I used it to erase a girl's phone number off the boys' bathroom wall," Phil recalls.

"Oh? Whose number?" Keely asks with a gossipy smile.

{RING- Keely's cell phone rings}

"DON'T ANSWER THAT!" (The title for this BEEP.)

Keely makes the connection and somewhat nervously puts away the phone.

.

I've wondered for a while what message was left on Keels' cell. Who at prim and proper H. G. Wells would dare dial:

For a Good Time
Call Keely
555-0139

After all, post-Tanner, Keely has only eyes for Phil. The whole school knows they're a couple, even if they don't. Well, who? Owen? Then it came to me, quarterback Bruno Longfellow! Sure, he always seems to refrain from cursing, whether on the air with Keely doing an interview, or afterward. Polite, clean cut, a football star, for gosh sakes, but he did ask Keely out AND he did try to feel her up twice in Phil's darkened garage -- he's not the gentleman, after all. Perfect. What could he have said in his message? Well, the most uncharacteristic thing for Mr. Non-Potty Mouth to say was something lewd, reflective of the bathroom poetry in a boys' bathroom stall, and a fellow named "Longfellow" probably has the tongue to put the blue vocabulary (from, he claims, his fellow football players time spent a Lake Potty Mouth) to use here.

But how to make it funny? Simply putting a twist in by having Mandy Teslow mistakenly grab the wrong cell and playing back the voicemail provided the device, then it was a matter of not identifying her until the end of the BEEP, so the reader could think her her daughter instead. So, the ending would be Mrs. T. as a particularly proper Pickford parent taking charge of the situation -- guess the saying is true and it really does take a village to raise a football star. Hope this explanation helps. It's certainly longer than its BEEP.

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