Mon Aug 25 08:17 EDT 1997
Weekend Update: August 22-24

This weekend's story is really bizarre.  After a family movie on Saturday
night, we all turned in to bed around 10 pm.  The girls had a friend,
Alaina Martin, sleep over that evening.

At 11:55 pm, the phone rings.  Luckily, we brought the portable phone up
to our room that evening.  I'm still probably more than half asleep and
say, "hello?"

"Hello, who is this?"
"To whom am I speaking?" I ask.
"You called me three times tonight and we have caller ID.  We're going
to notify the police and prosecute you!"
"What?"
He repeated himself, and I'm trying to figure out through my fog-bound
brain, "is this someone I know?", "is this a crank call?", "I think
this guy is serious."

"Go ahead and prosecute me.  I have no idea what you're talking about."

By this time, the caller figures I'm some guy he woke up so he says,
"Someone in your house called this number three times in the last
half hour!"

"What!? We're all in bed in this house!"

"Someone from your number has called this number and just stayed on the line
three times in the last half hour."

"I don't know what you're talking about..." I get out of bed and put
on my robe and stumble into the next bedroom where Alaina and Jessica
are sleeping.  Stumbling further, I see Emily laying on the floor
in Mandy's room just outside Jessica's doorway. She wanted to be part
of the pajama party.  Now, Andrew did not want to be left alone on the
third floor so he also found a place on Mandy's floor for the evening.

It's dark in Mandy's room.  I went there because it is the only place
in the house where there is a phone and any people.  As I expected
all my kids are quiet and I'm about to tell this guy he's a nutcase.
Mandy sits up in bed and  asks what's going on.

I ask the guy on the phone, "when was your last phone call?"
"11:45"  Just 10 minutes prior so I ask Mandy, "have any of you touched
the phone in the last half hour?"

"Well, Andrew kicked over the phone and it was beeping so we just hung it
up."  said Mandy.

I tell the guy on the phone, "My son is sleeping on the floor in my
daughter's room and he kicked over the phone and it must have
somehow dialed your number.  I have no clue what happened; I can't
imagine the quirk of fate that caused it to dial your number,but I'm
unplugging this phone and you shouldn't have another problem this evening."

The caller becomes more apologetic.  "I'm sorry, but we've been getting
some very obscene phone calls lately.  I'm a pastor and you can understand..."

"I understand. I'm the son of a Pastor - Rev. Russell Metcalfe in Quincy,
Massachusetts and I can tell you that no one in this house would
make such calls."

"Metcalfe?  This is Van Williams, Pastor of the Fitchburg Church of the
Nazarene."

Now that's really bizarre! I think after hanging up the phone. The matter
was resolved but the mystery remained.  How on earth did this set of
circumstances collide?  I tossed for an hour before I was able to get
back to sleep, unable to resolve the mystery.

Joy came up with the key in the morning.  Miranda is attending a local
college program this fall and she called Vanessa Williams in Fitchburg
some days ago who will also be attending the college program.  Theirs was
the last phone number dialed from the phone in her room.  Apparently,
Andrew in hs restless sleep, kept kicking the phone off the hook and
hitting the redial number.  Being asleep, Van Williams got late night
phone calls with no one saying anything on the other end.
(He may have even got heavy breathing if the receiver was near my
sleeping son's face!)

We blamed the friend who slept over that evening for setting off this
chain of bizarre events.  :-)

The rest of the weekend was filled with fruit picking, grouting the tile,
and other chores like lazing by the pool.

Mark
                      _________________________________
          __    _____|         Mark Metcalfe           |_____    __
_________|  |__|    :|   Cadence Design Systems, Inc.  |     |__|  |_________
\       :|  |::|    :|         (508) 446-6451          |     |::|  |,       /
  \     :|  |::|    :|      metcalfe@cadence.com       |     |::|  |\_0__,/
    >   :|  |::|    :|_________________________________|     |::|  |  M <
  /     :|__|::|____:/                                 \.____|::|__| .|\. \
/_______:/  \::/                                             \::/  \._______\