It was around three in the morning when the phone rang.
We were fast asleep. I don't know what my wife was dreaming about, but I was having that one where Donald Trump was following me around a department store and knocking over displays. Then he'd duck out of sight really quickly so the clerks thought it was me. It's not a very nice dream, and I don't know what it means, but it has really coloured how I feel about The Donald.
Anyway, the second the phone rang we were awake. My wife said, "Who could be calling at this hour?"
I'm not sure how she expected me to respond. I think she wasn't really asking who would be calling at that hour. What she meant to say was "I wonder who died or had a horrible accident?"
Because that's what we were both thinking. In fact, the second the phone rang, even as we were in the process of gaining consciousness, we were both mentally scanning those morbid personal lists we all keep of people we love who are most likely to be the next to shuffle off this mortal coil. I hate myself for keeping the list - and I would never tell anyone they're on it - but it's there. Sorry, Uncle Don.
I leapt out of bed, because that's the rule in our house. My wife doesn't do "leaping out of bed".
First off, I had to find and put on my bathrobe, which is fairly easy to do in daylight when you're fully awake and have all the time in the world but is more of a challenge when the room is pitch black and the phone is ringing. I was still just halfway out of the dream and I had that whirly feeling you get when you stand up really fast. So I ended up hopping down the hallway with my leg through the armhole of my bathrobe.
About halfway down I hopped directly onto one of the ragged edges of a half-chewed leather doggy bone, which cleared away the cobwebs a little. Now the phone is ringing, I'm bouncing down the hallway like some sort of deranged kangaroo going "Owowowowow" and my wife is back in the bedroom saying "Aren't you going to answer it?"
One of these days, Alice.
I made a final, desperate lunge for the phone. There was a young woman on the other end who wanted to know if "Jeff" was there. Jeff? We don't have a Jeff at our house. It was a wrong number, and mustering every tiny scrap of made-in-Canada politeness I possess, I told her so.
So she wanted to know if Ed was there.
I'm thinking, "t's a wrong number for Jeff. How does she figure Ed will be here? Do Ed and Jeff have this deal where Ed goes to the houses of people who have almost the same number as Jeff in case some peabrain wants to reach Jeff at three in the freaking morning?"
I confess I was - well, somewhat abrupt with this woman. In point of fact, had I been able to physically reach down the phone lines, you might well have read about this incident in this newspaper by now. As it is, I suspect that the next time she wants to make an early morning phone call, she'll pay a little closer attention to the buttons. Unless she wants to learn a few more new words.
By the time I got back to bed, my wife was already asleep. She stirred long enough to say "Who was that?"
"Wrong number," I told her.
"Who did they want?" she asked.
I have tried, but I cannot fathom what possible use she might have for that information. So I rolled over and went back to sleep.
Soon I was back in the department store, and The Donald was following me again, stopping at every pay phone to make calls to Jeff and Ed.
Evidently - and I sort of suspected this - they're old friends of his.
Nils Ling's book "Truths and Half Truths" is a collection of some of his most memorable and hilarious columns. To order your copy, send a cheque or money order for $25.00 (taxes, postage and handling included) to RR #9, 747 Brackley Point Road, Charlottetown, PE, C1E 1Z3
