God is on the line. Will you accept the 75¢ charge?
There hasn’t been a lot to report lately, unless you count the sudden total destruction (and almost as speedy rebuilding) of San Francisco, but everybody’s writing about that. I was there (Well, it was partly my fault), but I don’t really have a lot to add to the national dialogue.
What I’d really like to post about is the bizarre phone call I got a couple of nights ago.
I was up late. Well, I’m always up late, but I was up really late. My cellphone rang, which is unusual at that time of not-day. The number just read ’7′, which is obviously bogus. I figured it had to be a telemarketer or a Nigerian prince’s widow, or something like that. But, out of morbid curiosity and boredom, I answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hyah, Iyav som’n biyanama Godonnalyne. Willyacepta sevnifievesin charge?”
“Excuse me? Sorry. Can you talk slower?” She sounded like she was from New York. Not that I know anybody from New York to compare her to. She took a deep breath, which seemed to suggest that I was only going to get one more try at understanding her before she came through the phone and murdered me. (It was a very expressive breath. I expect it takes years of training to learn to do that.)
“God is on the line. Will you accept the 75¢ charge?”
“Oh.”
The silence on the other end was actually physically painful. I have no idea how long it takes to learn to do that. I quickly deduced that ‘Oh’ was not the word she was looking for, but I was really quite uncertain how to proceed.
Now, sure, where God is concerned 75¢ is really a very small commitment. Obviously, though, this was not only a con, but a con that had the nerve to call collect. Again, morbid curiosity won out. 75¢ is also cheap entertainment.
“Sure. I’ll accept.”
“Olwaleconekcha…”
There was a brief pause, and then a deep voice on the other end, “Daft. Excellent. I’ve called Twenty-five thousand fifty-six of my people, and you’re the first one that was willing to receive the call.”
I was a little perturbed that he knew my name, but with tall the information floating around on the internet, I wasn’t terribly surprised. “Whatever. Who is this?”
“God, Daft. The Great I Am. YHWH.”
“Sure. Just because you can pronounce Yahweh without any vowels doesn’t make you God.”
“I’ll leave that up to you. I have a message for you.”
At least it was an amusing prank, if not very original. “Ok, sure. What is it?”
“Make sure you write this down. You have a pen.” I did, which was mildly disturbing. He went on, “Eat the pie. Always walk in the middle. Don’t leave the light on… You aren’t writing it down.”
I wasn’t. Also disturbing. “Are you watching me or something? Where are you?”
“I’m always watching. I’m omnipresent. It’s not always fun. Humor me. Write it down.”
“Sure. Sure.” I wrote it down. Maybe it was one of my friends pulling the prank. (If it was, own up. You owe me 75¢.)
“And be sure you ask for four hundred more than they offer.”
I copied it down that last sentence, and then caught myself. Ridiculous. What am I doing? “Ok, that doesn’t make any sense at all. You need better material.”
“Tell everybody.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. What kind of prankster are you? Just having some fun?”
“It’s not really all that much fun. Twenty-five thousand is a lot of rejections.”
“Well, yeah. What kind of person accepts a collect call from God?”
“One with just the right amount of morbid curiosity. You should talk to me more often. See you when you’re dead.”
And he hung up.
And, whoever he was, he’s right. It wasn’t God. It was probably a call from 4:35 AM telling me I should be asleep. Or that I was asleep.
But, out of morbid curiosity, there you go. Eat the pie. Don’t leave the light on. Always walk in the middle, and ask for four hundred more than they offer.
