Dream Come True

The phone rang until our answering machine picked up. At the beep, the caller started leaving her message, “We’re on TV tonight. You should tune in to see. . .”

The voice sounded like a friend, so I grabbed the phone. “Hello,” I said.

The caller continued talking, and it turned out to be not a friend, but a recorded commercial for some TV network. She was telling about the shows coming on tonight. I listened for a few more seconds, not recognizing any of the show names, and not at all caring, anyway.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “They’re calling with TV commercials, now?” I decided to vent at the stupid message. “This is really pathetic. If I don’t watch TV enough to see your commercials on TV, you’re going to call me on my phone to bug me in the middle of dinner? This is stupid.”

I thought I noticed the woman’s voice quaver a bit when I started ranting. I went on for a few more seconds and the voice seemed to stammer.

I stopped my complaining and asked, “Is this a real person?”

The commercial continued, but did I detect a pause after my question? I listened another several seconds, and then repeated my question, “Is this a real person?”

There was a quiet, “Mm-hmm,” and then the commercial continued.

“You’re not allowed to say anything other than the script?” I asked.

No answer. The commercial continued. I felt kind of bad for having ranted at the woman. Even telemarketers are people.

“Well that’s kind of a waste,” I said. “If they’re going to have a real person make the commercial call, they could let them answer questions.”

She finished her script and said good-bye. The call ended and I hung up.

Okay. That was weird, I thought. That’s definitely going in the blog.

And then I woke up. Yep, the whole thing had been a dream. At first I was disappointed; the phone call would have made a good blog topic. Then I thought about going ahead and writing about it anyway.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com