wildyams

Elton?

If anyone has seen Elton, let him know his wife and kids are looking for him.

Confused? So was I. I got back to my apartment last night after spending the last two and a half weeks at my Dad's place, and one of the first things I did was check my answering machine. Now normally if I spend time at my Dad's place, I'll get a few messages from people who either don't know my Dad's number or who don't know I'm over there, and I might get a telemarketing message or two but that's about it. So imagine my surprise when I saw I had 24 messages when I got home. My first thought was that something was very badly wrong, like there had been some kind of emergency or something. Fortunately that wasn't what had happened, and instead something else had happened.

It turns out that I've got a stalker.

The only thing is, she's not stalking me

See, my answering machine message is extremely short. It is just me saying "Hey it's my answering machine" and then the beep goes off. I figure most people know what to do with an answering machine without me telling them to leave a message after the beep, so that's all my message is. Anyway, evidently some woman (she never left her name in all the myriad of phone calls) was trying to reach her estranged husband Elton, and mistakenly thought my number was his. Unfortunately for her, Elton's cell phone wasn't working, so the only way she thought she could get in touch with him was by calling my number. Naturally I wasn't there to tell her she had a wrong number, so she decided to leave him a few messages. About 19 of them to be precise, and she would have no doubt left more except that she rapidly filled up my answering machine and she was cut off mid-way through her final message once she had exhausted my machine's storage capacity.

I recorded about 5 or 6 of her messages and put them together in a wav file for you to listen to, if you're at all interested. The wav file is 4.5 megs and is 5 minutes long, but the first message is definitely the best (she believed that Elton was messing around on her with some other woman, and was on a drug binge and had left she and the kids to fend for themselves). In the second message she breaks down crying (and I know I'm going to hell for finding entertainment value in that, but I justify it to myself that maybe it's just a misunderstanding because she has the wrong number, and Elton is actually not doing what she's accusing him of ); but then most of the rest of her messages were her basically saying "Elton, I know you're there, just pick up the phone. Elton? Why are you being this way?" She must have left at least 10 messages in a row like that, so I cut it off after a few of those. So without further ado, here is the one-sided drama which took place on my answering machine over the last week or so. Enjoy:

elton.wav