Drew Shannon/The Globe and Mail
My phone rang at 2 p.m. last Sunday afternoon. While I have caller ID, I seldom look at it as there are a limited number of people who actually call me; most folks communicate by e-mail, text, through Facebook or Instagram. It is a coterie of close friends and family who pick up the phone, and they often do so at predictable hours.
Sunday afternoon was not a usual time.
And so I answered, to be greeted in a most friendly fashion by a gentleman.
“And how are you this afternoon?”
After replying that I was well, thank you and how are you?, I tried to dig into the recesses of my mind to establish to whom I was speaking.
A telemarketer? A possibility, but this person seemed to know a great deal about me, such as the fact that it was my birthday the following day, although I suppose that is now completely public information. The office of the physiotherapist whom I visited once four years ago sent me a happy-birthday e-mail, as did the Bay when I was in my late 60s, inquiring whether I needed to update my nursery.
I guess their information includes dates of birth but, obviously, not years.
I also heard from every magazine I had ever subscribed to and my old high school, a place I have not seen in 50 years.
I am generally on to scammers and I love to talk to them, asking them why don’t they reveal the last four digits of their Visa cards and then I might be inclined to give them mine. I always ask telemarketers who call at dinnertime to give me their home phone numbers so that I might call them back at my convenience. Those who are proselytizing are happy to get off the phone with me as I ask pointed questions about God and the atrocities she has allowed. I remember as I listen never to say the word “yes,” as crooks can edit the call and use my “yes” to authorize whatever they want.
But I can’t figure out today’s call. Is someone calling because they are conducting a political poll and want my opinion on how to govern the country during a pandemic? Something I am sure to know ... not.
But the gentleman wishes me a happy birthday and asks me how I am going to celebrate. My guard goes up a bit though I give a general answer, which is the truth, as really, what can one do to celebrate these days?
And we continue talking. I am concerned about my faculties as the birthday cake needs lots of candles this year. Am I forgetting voices?
I run through the men in my life, family, friends, husbands of friends, and I am getting nowhere. But the chat is pleasant and I do love a puzzle.
I discovered that the man had gone skiing within the past week and that the snow coverage on the big hills was not great. There had been a rainstorm the week before that had wiped away the good powder.
Okay, this person is a skier. Who do I know who skis? I have a bunch of cousins who love the hills but this sure doesn’t sound like any of them. And they do not call with any regularity, and surely not, seemingly, without purpose.
So I thought about geography. Where had there been a rainstorm? The phone did not ring with the usual long-distance three-beep ring, but tech-savvy people can override anything, I am told.
The voice was being familiar with me, not in a creepy way, but in a pleasant fashion.
It was like playing Clue. It is male of a certain age. He knows me well. Well, maybe. Could he be Colonel Mustard who was planning to off me in the library with a candlestick?
(Later when I told this story to my son, he said. “Of course you would talk to a stranger! That is so you! Why didn’t you just hang up?” That, actually, never occurred to me.)
Soon the man said, “Dad has taken the girls skiing, and I am here with Mom.”
That man had a dad who skied? The girls?
Wait a minute!
OMG.
This was my 13-year-old grandson, but with a voice quite different than the one he had a few weeks ago.
My Lightning McQueen loving, teddy-bear hugging, fearless little boy who lined his Thomas the Tank Engine characters up according to colour. The kid I hoisted up in the air playing airplane as he dangled from my legs. (I tried it when he was 11. My back went out.) The fire engine-obsessed right-winger whose scrappy hockey skills had him avoiding other players at five years old by going under their arms. The little boy whose curls and caring and compassion go from here to eternity. This was him?!
“Nanny, are you there?”
No mystery really. No eccentric weirdo after all my secrets.
“Oh,” I say, as if I knew all along, “so you are heading back into the city. Yes, dear, I’m, here.”
Virginia Fisher Yaffe lives in Montreal.
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