I am dork about voicemail.
Even when I am preparing myself to do nothing more than leave a message, once that beep indicates I may begin, everything in my brain scrambles.
Instantaneously.
And I leave these rambling, muttering, nonsensical messages. “Um, hi. It’s me. Uh. Erin. And I was just calling because – um, why was it? – oh, yeah! I have this question…”
And those are my more articulate attempts.
It’s surprising really. When you consider what a great start answering machines and I had. My dad was the first person I knew to get one. (Not an unexpected twist. He was always first with anything technological – such an early adopter the term didn’t even exist yet.) I was seven. And I was so thrilled to hear an automated voice on the end of the line. And, more importantly, thrilled by the thought of my own voice on someone else’s tape machine. Joy!
I think I called him 17 times that day. To babble on and on about anything I could think of.
“Hi Dad. It’s Erin. Mom made me peanut butter and honey for lunch. And it was perfect. That spun honey -- you know? the one with the bear on the outside...”
Probably followed by:
“Hi Dad. It’s Erin. I’m up in the bedroom watching cartoons. Those Smurfs….”
Who knows what else I prattled about. I wonder if I talked about school or my friends. I wonder if I talked about homework or the piano (Dad was trying to teach me to play). Would I have told him about skinned knees or stubbed toes? Would I (gasp) have sung?
I still pray to the gods about that tape. If they love me at all, the answering machine would have short circuited after my fourth message or so. I pray that each successive message just recorded over the previous. Or maybe – if I’ve been a really good girl – the machine would have lost all of them under that pressure (17! messages!). Maybe (mercifully) the tape was only good for 5 minutes of messages or so. Or maybe Dad was in a particularly unsentimental mood that day and fast forwarded through the last 15.
Oh, and gods, if you’re listening, if you can do anything, please let him have thrown away the tape.
Amen.
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