I answered the call because Jeff was busy cooking, and said, “Hey, could you get it? Please?”
He also added that he didn’t want dinner to burn, which added a little extra unspoken urgency as to why I should. I don’t like answering the phone. Never have. Teenage girls on phones for hours? Not me. Music for hours was my choice.
I don’t like talking on the phone. My timing is always off. I adore text even though it sometimes takes me a good ten minutes to write out what could have been said in three. Phone calls also require you and the person you are planning to talk to be available at the exact same moment.
Anyway, the point is – I didn’t often answer our phone. The guy with the gift of gab usually handled that.
But, that night, I acquiesced. Because, dinner.
Everything that followed “Hello” was a bit awkward and odd. I was told upfront that I was talking to a complete stranger who was offering kindness and support. I wasn’t clear why and I had no idea what to do with this situation, but Jeff was unavailable and so I listened.
She introduced herself as some sort of committee member of Tecumseh United Methodist Church. She was just checking on us after our most recent loss; said she was just seeing if we needed anything, offering her support, extending an invitation to visit the church.
We talked for a few minutes, or rather she talked. I said, “Oh,” “Ok’” and “Thank you” a lot. Then she asked if she could call us back in a few weeks, just to see how we were doing. I thought it’d seem kind of rude to say no, so I said, “Sure.”
When I hung up, Jeff asked me who it was. “I don’t know her name, but…” I started. (although I 100% believe she must have told me when she introduced herself, I’d found the whole thing befuddling) “… she’s from… the church,” I finished, referring to the church where Sally’s funeral had been.
“Well, what’d she want?”
“Um,” I said. “Something about a committee that checks on people after someone dies and wanted to know if we were doing ok.”
Jeff listened intently to my sketchy, scattered bits of recall, nodding his head like everything I was saying made perfect sense to him.
“Hmm,” he said, with an accepting nod. “Supper’s done.”
Quote for the Week:
Enjoy this Week’s Discovery Links:
Phone: Pro
Phone: Con
Phone: 1990 Argument that caller ID invades privacy
knabble 
I usually don’t like talking on the phone either. Coincidentally enough I had 2 separate phone conversations last night. One call I cautiously placed myself to “check in” on a friend. Of course, she started hashing out the same old story again, drawing out the conversation until I abruptly ended the call, “well, I gotta go!” The second call was from my brother. We hadn’t talked to each other since November, I think. We did a lot of catching up and was a very nice, over an hour long conversation. What I miss most are landlines. Maybe I’m just getting old, but, the landline phones seemed to be clearer than calls placed on cell phones.
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You know, Irma, I think we were more centered tethered to the wall. I mean, now we can do just about anything, and some people do (bathrooms, ugh.) If you were on the phone back then, you meant to be on the phone and had something to say which made everything else stop for a moment, or two… 🙂
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