Spring, 2006

I Know You Believe You Understood What You Think I Said But I Am Not Sure You Realize That What You Heard Is Not What I Meant

It's fun to play fill in the blanks on conversations. When you only hear, 'Uh-huh… yeah… I know…' you have no clue what's on the other end. On the other hand, things like, 'What a jerk!' 'Oh, no, she did-n't!' or 'I know a great divorce lawyer' are a little more obvious. 'Oh, Yelp is much better than the Better Business Bureau' means someone's business is getting blasted off the map (hope they deserve it). But I loved reading Harriet, the Spy as a kid and still play the listening game—listen to a conversation and try to imagine what the participants look like. Plus, as Rhett Butler said, 'Eavesdroppers often hear highly entertaining and instructive things.'

In this instance Valerie was in Ev's office, hunched over the phone with one hand pushing the receiver into her ear, the other hand covering the opposite ear so firmly she was in danger of making ear-nose-throat truly a one stop doctor visit. Since the only sound in the room was sub-audible music, it sure wasn't ambient noise she was fighting.

"I'm sorry, sir, it's really hard to—is there any other phone—I'll try—" She listened hard. "I'm sorry?" More listening. "I'm not sure I—" Really intense listening. "Oh! Yes! I can reroute that for you!"

Oh, joy. After too many 'I didn't change my address!' pissed off customers, we blocked our FedUps accounts so that only Papyrus staff could change the address on a package. (Our losses were immediately and appreciably reduced.)

"One-nine-three-five? One? Nine? Nine-nine-three-five? Nine-five-three-five? Nine-five-eight-five? Nine-five-eight-nine? Nine-five-eight-five? Okay, nine-five-eight-five, great." Valerie's perky customer service voice was still steady. "Nine-five-eight-five-C? T? C like Charlie? T like Tango? Charlie? Charlie?" She rolled her eyes. "P like Party." (Military phonetics has words that don't sound alike for a reason. That should be Papa. Charlie and Party sound a lot alike—like T, C, B, G, V, yadda, yadda.)

"Okay… Birch Street?" Val was starting to sound a hair desperate. "Birch? Like the tree? Perch? Like the fish?" She looked at me helplessly and I shrugged. "Research? Research Loop? Besmirch?!" Yeah, she was getting desperate.

She listened long and hard with a growing WTF look on her face. "The mall?" she said desperately. She listened, looking even more confused. "In bed?" After a moment, her face cleared. "Oh, got it!" She typed quickly, trying not to laugh. "Okay, USPS website verified the address. I'll put through that correction and email you the adjusted delivery date," she half-yelled. "Thank you, Mr. Perry." When she hung up she gave in and started to giggle.

"Okay. Give."

"I swear he was calling from a machine shop in the middle of a wind tunnel. Couldn't hear a word!"

"I could tell. What was so funny?"

"We got the number down, and I just could not hear the street name. I swear it sounded like 'Lurch' and I just couldn't picture that as a legit name. Unless they had Morticia, Gomez and Itt in the housing development, too. So I tried everything that sounded like it. Finally he said, 'Where do you go on Sunday?' I still work part time at Payless Shoes, so I said, 'The mall?' He got really huffy and said, 'No, in the morning!'"

Even as she said, "I sleep in, duh," I started to laugh. "Church Street?"

"Church Street," she confirmed. "He's probably praying for my lost soul as we speak."

Geoff had heard the last of the exchange as he sauntered in to get a box of bookmarks. "Glad I didn't get the call. Saying 'Demons and Dungeons Zombie Apocalypse' would have made him drop dead on the spot."