Wondering If There’s Any Way to Transfer Calls to India

When the phone started singing “Fur Elise” early this morning, startling me out of a sound sleep, I knew my parents were on the other end. I had specifically programmed the phone to play that song when they called, as I had — not fond, exactly, but certainly not bad — memories of all three of us children learning to play it on the piano. I did not realize, however, that programming the phone in this way would cause me to instantly feel dread and a “what do they want now” feeling upon hearing the beginnings of the song, much like Pavlov’s dogs must have been annoyed at the drool forming at the first bell.

I picked up the phone and answered it with, “Do you know I’m still sleeping?”

“Sorry, sorry,” said my dad. He moved right on to more important matters. “Ww mozilla dot org says ‘does not exist.’ Why?”

After 35 years of dealing with my father, I have learned that the questions he asks are often not the ones he really wants answered. I countered with a question of my own.

“What are you trying to do, Dad?”

“Go into my gmail.”

“You have to go to gmail.com.”

“It’s not working.”

“That happens sometimes.” (I wanted to say, “It’s the Internet,” but a conversation yesterday with my mother had ended with her being unable to understand that “the Internet” was not the same as “Internet Explorer.” She had, in fact, summarized our conversation as, “So there’s the Internet and then there’s Firebox.” “FOX, Mom, it’s FireFOX.” “Yes, Firebox.”)

Instead I said, “Sometimes the site is down.” I wondered if I should point out to my father that I was not a Google engineer, and decided that would only make him ask me to become one, so that I could provide immediate email support to him at all hours, instead of just at dawn.

“OK,” he said. “I try again later.” He hung up. He does not like to say goodbye on the phone, either because social conventions escape him, or because he considers saying goodbye a waste of time and phone money from back in the days when you paid per minute. But that was fine, because I had already hung up too. After all, I am my father’s daughter.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | July 19, 2009 | 11:20 am
Posted in: Bits