Ever since the invention of the telephone, humans have reveled in their newfound ability to chat with people far and wide. No longer do we have to rely on carrier pigeons, smoke signals, or yelling across great distances. In today’s world, you could be orbiting Mars and still manage to reach out and touch someone. A few taps and voilà—you’re connected.
But let’s be real: nothing beats a good old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. Why? Because communication is as much about seeing someone’s face twitch in confusion as it is about the words coming out of their mouth. This is especially true when you’re about to spring a surprise, and boy, do we have a story for you. Prepare to smile, laugh, and possibly question all family gatherings for the foreseeable future.
Once upon a time, in the land of cordless phones and curious kids, a little girl picked up a ringing phone. The conversation went something like this:
“Hello?” the little girl chirped. “Hi honey. This is Daddy. Is Mommy near the phone?
“No Daddy. She’s upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Paul.”
What followed was a silence so loud you could hear Daddy’s mental gears grinding from miles away. “But honey, you haven’t got an Uncle Paul.”
“Oh yes I do, and he’s upstairs in the room with Mommy, right now.”
Now, most dads would have already developed a slight tremor in their left eye. But this Dad kept it together. Briefly, he paused, plotting the next move on this bizarre chessboard of life.
“Uh, okay then, this is what I want you to do. Put the phone down on the table, run upstairs, knock on the bedroom door, and shout to Mommy that Daddy’s car just pulled into the driveway.”
“Okay Daddy, just a minute.”
Minutes ticked by, long enough for Daddy to contemplate every bad decision he’d ever made. Then the little girl came back to the phone. “I did it, Daddy.”
“And what happened honey?” he asked, likely while holding his breath.
“Well, Mommy got all scared, jumped out of bed with no clothes on and ran around screaming. Then she tripped over the rug, hit her head on the dresser, and now she isn’t moving at all!”
Was there a collective gasp on the other end? You bet. “Oh my God!!! What about your Uncle Paul?”
“He jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, too. He was all scared, and he jumped out of the back window into the swimming pool. But I guess he didn’t know that you took out the water last week to clean it. He hit the bottom of the pool and I think he’s dead.”
Silence. A deathly, eerie silence engulfed the phone lines. Long pause.
Then Daddy’s voice sliced through the tension like a butter knife but with the sharpness of a samurai sword. “Swimming pool? … Is this 486-5731?”
Yeah, dear reader, you’re thinking exactly what Daddy was thinking—wrong number. And if there’s a moral to this story, it’s probably to double-check who you’ve dialed before initiating commands that could cause apocalyptic-level chaos.
