the secret phone

I'm driving back to the office from lunch yesterday when a strange number dials my phone (well, to be fair...a person dialed my phone from a number I did not know). I answer my phone in that awkward tone...you know the one...totally unsure of who is on the other line and wondering as to whether or not it's really in my best interest to find out...just to discover it's my father. He is calling from his "other phone"...his apparent "secret phone".

Really, what happened is that he got that stupid Storm phone a while back and hated it (it was not very user friendly), but couldn't get a new phone without paying a ridiculous amount of money. The sales person at Verizon helped him find a loop-hole by way of paying a small amount for another line and then switched his old phone number to the new phone and his new phone number to the Storm (or something like that) - hence this secret phone.

I can't decide if he just thought he was being cool having two phone numbers and wanted to make it public or if he really just felt the need to let me know there was a problem with his "real" phone and he had to go to Verizon (my latest enemy) to get the problem fixed...you know...in case I needed him and couldn't get a hold of him in the 20 minutes it took Verizon to provide him with a brand new replacement phone. Funny, Verizon, how my father gets a brand new replacement phone when his goes crazy, but when mine went all loony-toonish I got told to deal with it for 4 days until my refurbished phone could make its debut into the world. Nice.

After he explains why he has his secret phone which he actually calls his back-up phone, but I like being dramatic (and that my mother knows about it - love, love, love how he threw that in there), he makes a point of telling me that he called my brother and got the same weird reaction from him as he did from me. Well no kidding, dad! I mean I'm kinda thinking you like this attention or why else would you be making all these prank calls from your bat phone?! For the record, y'all...my brother, though yes...he works for our fam biz and does talk to my father several times throughout the day, he works in Virginia, so had he not been in communication with our father for oh let's say an hour, rest assured, he would have wormed his way onto my phone and everything would have been just dandy.

I asked if I should plug this "new" number into my phone as a secondary number for him and he said he won't have it forever and then he paused and thought about it and then he added that he may just keep it because it's kind of nice having a second phone for when things like this happen. Things like what, dad? When your phone stopped working and you were bored and decided to see what kind of a reaction you could get from two of your four kids by calling them from your secret phone during the 20 minutes it took Verizon to replace your phone. I mean...wow...what an inconvenience this must have been for you! Sheesh! Maybe his calls to me and my brother were legitimate OR maybe, just maybe this is what happens when he calls my mom and she doesn't answer because she is at the movies. Things that make you go hmmmm?!?!?!?!