Have you ever had one of those moments where you seriously wonder whether there was a mix up at the hospital and your family went home with the wrong baby? Or that your whole birth was a soap opera type cover up, and the truth is that your parents found you in the dumpster behind the local bar, treading water in a Walmart toilet, or crawling through a cabbage patch? I had one of those moments last night.Around 10:30 or 10:45 p.m., my phone rang. I looked at caller ID and saw my grandmother's number. Chandler had called me earlier in the evening to complain about how mean my sister was being, denying him access to his new Wii game. (Boo hoo, right? I guess taking away the Wii is a tragedy of monumental proportions in a nine-year-old's world.) I figured that he was still up and was calling to complain again. Consequently, I answered the phone like this:
"What now, Chandler?"
All I got was silence.
"Chandler, what do you want? I'm trying to watch Private Practice."
Finally, I got an answer, albeit from my grandmother, not my nephew. "Hello?"
"What?"
"Hello?"
"Hello."
"Who's this?"
"Staci. Who the heck do you think it is?"
"Staci?"
"Yes, Staci. Your granddaughter."
"I didn't call you."
"Uh, yeah, you did."
"No, no, I didn't."
"Well, you're talking to me now, and I didn't call you."
"Well, I, uh, hit this thing here...this, uh, what's it called? Uh, re...uh...re..."
"Last number redial?"
"Yes, that's it."
"Well, obviously I was the last number dialed."
"No, you weren't."
"On that phone, I must have been. Chandler called me earlier to complain about Tina."
"But the phone just rang."
"So?"
"So did you just call me?"
"No."
"But I hit redial to call that person back."
"Oh...my...god...You don't hit redial to call someone back."
"Yes, you do."
"No, you don't. You use redial to dial the last number dialed."
"But the phone just rang."
"Again I say so?"
"So that's the last number dialed."
"Good grief. Seriously? How long have you been using a phone now? Like a hundred years? Redial means the last number you dialed, not the last number that dialed you."
"It does?"
"Yes, it does."
"Well, tell me how do I get the number off of here."
"Just scroll through the caller ID screen and hit delete."
"No, not the number of whoever just called. Your number."
"You want to get rid of my number?"
"Yes, so I can hit redial and get the right number."
"Did you not hear a word I just said? Redial will not allow you to call the last number that called you."
"But I need to call them back."
"So look at their number on caller ID and dial it."
"But I'm going to have to delete your number first."
"No, you're not."
"Ah, hell, Staci. Just tell me how to delete your number."
"You can't delete it! All you can do is dial another number, and then that number will be the last number dialed."
"Well, don't tell me how to do it then. I'm sorry I bothered you."
My grandmother hung up on me at that point, I'm assuming so she could call one of her friends and have them tell her what I wouldn't. It was either that or her cigarette was finally coming to an end and burning her fingers.
I don't know why I'm surprised by the exchange. After all, this is the woman who once scrunched up her nose, pointed her finger at our Himalayan's testicles, and asked my mother, "What are those?", the same woman who, on a different occasion, chastised my mother for calling me a bitch because, in her words, I had a father. Obviously, I didn't get my brains from her.
Is it too late to be adopted?
