The Lonely Answering Machine
USA
June 2002
Throughout my life, I have not typically had any experiences that could be classified as out of the ordinary, well, that is, until my first year as an undergraduate student.
One evening my roommate and I both found ourselves having plans which would take us away from our dorm room for several hours. At around 6:30, my roommate went off campus, stating that she would not be back till around midnight. At around 7:00, I walked out of my room, locked the door, and left the building to meet with a group of students.
As I entered the hallway of my dorm several hours later, a friend caught me and in a very puzzled voice, told me that she needed to talk to me. Upon entering her room, she shut the door, and told me that something very strange had happened to her.
Around 8:30 that evening, my friend's phone began ringing, and when she picked it up, she was startled to hear my answering machine message playing. After hanging up the phone in complete confusion, she walked to my room intending to ask why I had called her to simply play a message she had heard numerous times when calling me. However, upon arriving at my door, she noticed that there was no light showing under the door, and that she had received no response when knocking. What made the situation even more strange, was the fact that she had not called my room anytime recent enough for the phone call to simply become scrambled, nor had we called her any time close to the incident that evening. However, she was probably the person I called most frequently at the time, but we did not have the phone number on memory or speed dial. Furthermore, neither my roommate nor I had been our room near the time of my answering machine's strange desire to use the phone. Thus, to this day, none of us can truly state exactly how the call was made.
Could this simply be a simple strange mix- up somewhere that none of us had been aware of, or something that can not simply be explained by logical theory?
Or, could it even be an answering machine that just needed a little attention?
I invite you to decide for yourself.