Thursday, January 22, 2009

Who's Calling? Should It Matter?

My husband doesn’t answer our home phone unless he is positive I am physically unable to do so, meaning I am not home. He insists it is never for him, so why should he disrupt what he is doing to answer the phone – even if all he is doing is sleeping and watching television – something he mastered years ago. I know he is multitasking because if I turn off the TV, he immediately tells me to turn it back on.

Anyway, if I am physically unable to pick up the phone and he recognizes the caller, he will pick up the phone and hand it to me. Heaven forbid he should say “Hello.” However, if the caller ID only flashes a number or, even worse, “unknown name, unknown number,” he will turn and ask me, “Who is it?”

By the time I explain that I am not clairvoyant, either our machine picks up or the caller hangs up. The latter really infuriates me because then I never know if the “unknown name , unknown caller” was someone intending to bestow a million dollars on me because I answered my phone. The only phone calls Hubby answers ASAP are those on his cell phone. He says that if it is his phone, the call is for him.

The other day I had friends over for our weekly game of Mah Jongg. Hubby was in his home office. Our phone rang. There is an extension on his desk. I assumed he would answer it. He did not. My friends and I laughed at how our husbands all dislike answering the phone. Is it because when they worked, their secretaries censored their calls? Do they think of their wives as their secretaries?

Anyway, I found a solution to my problem. Now when I am busy, I use call forwarding and forward our home phone calls to his cell phone.