The Narrative of Kurt & Becky

What a crazy world we live in. One day you wake up feeling at ease. Of course watching the news on TV of listening to the news on the radio makes one rethink that easy feeling. But my general feeling is that although this place isn’t perfect, my life isn’t really affected. So go on with my day. Thursday 11 January was not that typical kind of day. It started out differently than any other day. I was awakened by my mobile phone ringing. I didn’t recognize the number but I answered it. I said, “Hello?” there was a pause, and then a man began speaking Spanish…I don’t speak Spanish so I somewhat awkwardly got across the message that he had the wrong number. I hung up thinking nothing of it. This kind of thing happens sometimes. Long story short it happened all morning into the early afternoon. All of those calls were Spanish-speaking males. Then around 3:00 a male called but he spoke English. He said he was calling about the ad. I asked him what ad he was referring to. He said the ad about massages. OH GREAT I thought, this guy thinks I am a whore. I asked him where he saw this ad. He told me it was in a Spanish magazine, and then hung up. So I am like, beside my self…thinking about how all of the calls earlier in the day starting at 6:30 am…were for this ad for massage.

So knowing I would get another call, I told my friend at work, who speaks Spanish. Then next time my phone rang, I ran to my friend. He spoke to the person on the phone. Apparently, this is a magazine that is freely available in taco shops, laundromats, etc. Once I got the name of the magazine, I searched for it on the internet. I found this website for an organization called “California Hispanic Publisher Group.” I saw a name and phone number so I called this lady. She gave me the telephone number for the magazine, and I called them. I spoke to this guy who apologized but he told me they publish weekly and that they are only distributed in Santa Ana. Also, there are over 300 ads for massage in the magazine. He said he was sorry but there was no way that they could check that many phone numbers. I understood, I wasn’t angry with him or any of those callers. They had my mobile phone number listed PERFECTLY in the ad. So I decided to just go with it, if anymore calls came in, I would tell them, “Tiene el numero equivicado” and they’d go away. But the problem was, they DIDN’T have the wrong number, they had the right number, but the wrong person, place or thing. AND they kept calling. But when I received two calls between 10pm-11:30pm, I had had it. The thing was, the last guy spoke English and I felt so disturbed by the whole situation. Sure I could have shut off my ringer, which I did do. But who knew if it would continue through the weekend and into next week? Or what if they keep publishing it (even though I called and corrected them)? Well, on the morning of 12 January 2007, I called my wireless service provider and had the number changed.

It is a hassle, yes, but so is not knowing if some freak-o guy is going to call for a “massage.”

Just so you know, right now, this isn’t really funny to me. Just stopping to think about what these men were trying to accomplish. Pick up a free mag with massage ads, call the number and set up an appt. Yuck.

Maybe later on I can look back at laugh. Hopefully that time is soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 12:26 and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.