Loose Tea

At one point during last week's crazy crunch week, I had to make one of those dreaded phone calls to try to "set things right." The whole prospect of the call put me in a bit of an angry funk. I really would have just rather left town than try to deal.

Finally, I could procrastinate no longer and dialed the number.

The voice on the other end was not what I expected. It was clearly an older person, but not clear whether they were taking the calls of my intended recipient or not.

A moment later, it became clear that I had dialed the wrong number.

Instead of a business or even a person working from home, I had dialed a 93-year-old woman in a retirement home in Seattle.

For her part, she was not at all upset and assumed I had meant to call the party store that people frequently were trying to call when dialing her number. What followed gave me better perspective.

She said that she loved getting calls to the wrong number because these were the only calls she received. It seems that life in the retirement home is not all it's cracked up to be. She still chases men she said but can't keep up with the ones she wants and doesn't want the ones who are her age, they can hardly move at all.

She told me, "I worked at a bank most of my career, I bet you can't guess my last name."

It is "Banker."

I told her that the name must have helped her get the job. She said, no, she didn't have the name when she started. She married her husband because of his last name.

Then she mentioned that after a happy life together, he had already passed on, thirty years ago.

After a bit more banter, I told her to have a good afternoon. She told me, "I always do."

I rang off and made the call I'd originally intended with all of the negatives gone. If a 93-year old woman in a retirement home in Seattle can be this positive about her afternoons, surely I have no cause to complain.