One missed call

I missed a call to my cell phone from my mom around 7:00 p.m. tonight. No message was left. I returned the call to her mobile and home numbers but didn't receive a response. No big deal, right?

Chances are it probably wasn't, and in this case it wasn't. Nevertheless, I've noticed that when I miss a call from my parents at a time when I wouldn't expect to receive one and don't get a message, part of me wonders if--and this is going to sound terrible--one of them has died or is being admitted to the hospital.

They're both at retirement age, so I suppose the news wouldn't be entirely unexpected. Still, neither of them are ill or in any state that would give me reason to jump to such a wild conclusion. It is purely my overactive imagination? worrisome nature? something else? I don't know that I grant such speculation any real seriousness, but it seems to me to be a bad impulse to have at all, especially because there's no evidence to merit it whatsoever.

As it turns out, tonight's call was an inquiry about getting audio and video from a computer to a television. I don't know why both of my calls went to voicemail--maybe they were on the line with another brother--but time was of the essence so my dad could watch a basketball game. Color me relieved and somewhat mortified where my mind meant. You can bet I didn't tell them what conclusion I leaped to.

Scary

Saturday night's car accident was kind of scary in retrospect, but since it caught me unaware, the actual experience of being in a car hit at a high speed wasn't frightening in and of itself.

No, one of the scariest things is to get a phone call in the middle of the night. Let's face it, if the caller is someone you know, then the reason for someone giving you a ring when most people are sleeping can't be a good one. If you don't know the person on the other end (or if it's someone who wouldn't typically call you), then the call simply can't have a positive outcome.

As a resident assistant for two years in college I received my share of harassing dead of the night phone calls. Sometimes the other person would just call repeatedly and hang up. Other times they would leave vulgar, insulting messages. (Due to this I rarely answered but instead screened through an answering machine.) And of course there was the late hour door pounding, among, among other lovely things that immature young men in dormitories do. (Once in a great while I'll get such calls from inebriated students, but thankfully it's not too common these days.)

It's pretty easy to understand why these experiences can be scary. Getting roused from deep sleep by something unexpected can be disorienting. It's all the worse if what one awakens to is intimidation or hostility.

I flashed back to some of these instances last night. At 4:32 a.m. I was jerked out of a Valium-aided slumber by a ringing phone. Huh? What? I was not going to get up and answer. Then about a minute or so after the phone stopped ringing there was a single thump on my front door. Now I was getting somewhat nervous.

At this point I did get up and checked the caller ID, which just displayed "private caller". It didn't appear that a message was left. I carefully peered outside the blinds to see if I could see anyone around. I didn't spot a soul. The same went when I looked out the peephole.

I did see that the newspaper was already delivered, which seemed extraordinarily early, but assuming that the periodical was tossed, that explained the rap on the door. It was just a terrible coincidence.

I'm going to assume the call was a wrong number, but laying there as all this was going down and afterward, my mind kept rendering frightful scenarios. I don't need this. Seriously.