"On Call"

This is my pager.  I was a little surprised to have to carry a pager for this job.  Who carries pagers anymore??  Especially big clumsy messaging pagers, but I guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

I remember back in the day when it was really cool and sophisticated to have a pager.  David and I first got pagers when I was pregnant with Dollie in 1991.  He worked in construction back then and I never knew where he would be working from day to day and he was really hard to get ahold of.  The pager gave me peace of mind I could reach him if the "big moment" came unexpectedly.  Only on the construction site it was so noisy he couldn't hear or feel the pager if it went off in his pocket or on his belt, so he used to wear it clipped to the back of his cap.  Even then he couldn't hear it sometimes.  If I was bored occasionally I would page him just to see if he would hear it.   So then of course he had to stop what he was doing, climb down from wherever he was on the job, and go call me back from the bag phone in his truck.  (Nah, we haven't driven each other a bit crazy over 25 years!  ahaha)   Oh those were the days!

But seriously, now 20 years later I'm still carrying one of these dinosaurs.  My employees and everyone else I deal with regularly have my phone numbers and just call me.  However on the "on call" lists at the hospital they have our pager numbers listed so I can't ignore it.  The funniest part is that apparently the hospital is not the only group that has this pager number on a list.  Get this....  some "entertainment / escort service" apparently has this number for one of their working girls because I get the STRANGEST messages!   Just about the only time my pager ever goes off, its telling me where the party is.  Oh my!   It gives being "on call" a whole other meaning!!!   I finally turned it off the week the NCAA Final Four tournament was in Houston -- the stupid thing went off constantly.   Apparently everyone wasn't in town just to watch basketball??

This pager sends and receives text messages as well as numbers and I've texted back numerous times to tell them its a wrong number and to delete it from their list with no success.  Maybe I ought to start having some fun with them?  I could text back something about being from the vice squad?  Or maybe pose as Wayne Dolcefino's producer?  Or some kind of STD warning service?? 

One of our family members used to live in Rosenberg, Texas (the northern-most city in Mexico) and their house phone number was just one digit different than a local hispanic taxi cab company.  After getting calls at all hours of the day and night requesting taxi cabs only to have the callers either argue or not speak English when they tried to tell them they had the wrong  number, they learned to say "Okay, we'll be there in 10 minutes" in Spanish.  Bahahahaaha!!!

On the other hand, maybe I should be looking into a second job?  I am trying to put a kid through college after all.  Though this wasn't exactly the "call of duty" I was thinking of ???