Reason #21 Why Parents Are a Danger to Themselves and Society

Does this happen to you? This happens to me all the time, and yet I still find it to be quite vexing: What is the deal with people who call you from their cell phone and when they don't get a hold of you, they leave you a voicemail asking you to call them back on their cell phone - and then they turn the damn things off?

My parents do this incessantly. It's the ultimate in passive-aggressive behavior. Whenever this happens, and this always happens after they've left me an urgent message saying, "Hurry up and call me back!!" I have horrific visions that they called me in an emergency and they had a terrible accident and their car went off a bridge, and they are trapped inside and their cell phone has sunk to the bottom of Long Island Sound. I panic until 4 hours later it finally occurs to them that they haven't heard from me, and although they are not really worrying that I have possibly driven off a bridge and was trapped in my car in Long Island Sound, they decide to call me back and then have the nerve to ask why the hell I never called them back.

I can hear it now:

"But I did call you back!! And I left you 17 messages!!"

"Oh, well I turned off my phone."

"Of course. But when you turned it on, didn't you get your voicemail?"

Oh. Well, I don't know how to get my voice messages. I haven't figured out how to work this phone, yet."

"But Mom, you've had that phone for 3 years."

"Well, maybe you should have sent me a text message. They show up on the phone right away, don't they?"

"Yes, but I am pretty sure the phone has to be turned on for that, too."

Posted by LA at February 17, 2003 02:23 PM | TrackBack