410-257-4351

This is our home phone number for the next twenty-four hours: 410-257-4351. And before this number was recycled and assigned to us a year ago, it belonged to the Huffners. While I am usually supportive of all corporate efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle, Verizon really screwed us this time. The Huffner family consists of Forrest and Maureen and their two daughters. I feel like I know them by now. They discontinued their telephone service in the Fall of 2007. In the middle of the night. At which point they did not make a point of notifying anyone about the change in their contact information: not their relatives, not their children's school, not the doctor's office, not their employers, not the credit card company, and certainly not the myriad creditors hot on their heels.

Robb and I have been fielding telephone calls for Forrest and Maureen for about a year. We receive at least one message for them every single day, even though our voice mail recording clearly states our names. Salesmen do not listen to our message, and collection agencies think that we are the Huffners pretending to be us to throw them off the trail. It matters little that we submitted the number with the National Do Not Call Registry.

We had no idea how annoying this situation would become. Early on we discovered that the Huffners subscribed to the Anne Arundel County Public Schools automated notification system. So on snow days around 5:00am our phone would ring and play a recorded message about a delay or closing. But we do not have any children, and we do not live in Anne Arundel County. When our telephone rings before 7:00am, I leap from bed in full panic mode, assuming the worst. By the time I pick up the phone my adrenaline has kicked in to prepare me for an emergency. So when I realize that it's just a recording, I am already far beyond wide awake. I am prepared to lift an automobile off of a baby. It is the equivalent of drinking a full pot of coffee, scalding hot and directly from the spout of the coffee pot. This went on for several months until finally--FINALLY--I got a recorded message from the second grade teacher at an elementary school asking the Huffners to call about several missed days. I called the school back and spoke with the nicest woman in the entire world, who was able to update the kid's records and unsubscribe us from the AACPS phone tree.

It would seem that the Huffners continue to fill out standardized forms and applications with their old phone number. Last week Robb spoke to a woman at a pediatrician's office who was calling with test results for one of the kids. Maureen had been there within the prior two weeks and confirmed that they had the correct phone number in their records. Robb and the nurse commiserated and tut-tutted over the incorrect records.

At first, I tried to explain to people that this used to be their phone number, but now it is ours. That only confused the matter because the caller then assumed that we knew the Huffners. They asked, "Do you know how I can reach them?" or "Where did they move to?" How could I explain to them that I was able to piece together their lives from the fragments left daily on my answering machine? We know that Forrest coaches a children's sports team. Several teen male voices have called looking for Coach Huffner. And some younger voices called one night to say that the coach is a "big poopy head" and hang up giggling. We know both of their daughters' names, even the last name of the one from a previous marriage. We know every credit card company that they are late making a payment to. Robb even figured out the names of their town and street when speaking with a distant cousin who called looking for the Huffners.

It is difficult to express how irritating it is to have every dinner interrupted with, "May I speak to Forrest?" Or sometimes they do not even ask, they just begin, "Maureen?..." and launch into something. We began telling people simply, "You have the wrong number." They apologized and called us back immediately. "You still have the wrong number." They read us what they dialed, and we confirmed that it was our number. Why did we pay for a year of home phone service when 75% of the calls are not meant for us? I suppose we could have called Verizon and asked for another new phone number. But we had already mailed little postcards with our contact information to everyone in our address book. Would Verizon reimburse us for stamps to send out another batch? Would the Huffners? We just stuck it out. I mean, the calls would probably taper off after a few weeks, right?

The Huffners are someone else's problem as of the close of business tomorrow. I don't even have sympathy to spare for their next victim. This Thanksgiving I am grateful to be rid of this phone number. Thus endeth twelve months of torture by telephone. *Sigh.*