Why do people call when I’m away?

I almost dread getting in the car and heading off to Smallville to buy horse feed. When I return, the message “New Voice Mail” is invariably on the phone’s screen. When I check for messages, they almost always were made just two or three minutes after I had left the house.

“Hi. This is Mmft Woobblm and I was just checking to see if you have….”
“Hi, this is Griffmbl Bennidgg and I wanted to know if you need….”
“This is a message for Brejmkl that we’re not coming.…”
“… number is sixoneseventwothreezeroeightfiveonenine and we wanted to find out [mumble, muffle]. Please call back in [muffle] minutes [mumble] my cell battery is dy….”

It’s like someone is watching with binoculars then saying “I see his dust cloud! He just went through the first gate—start calling!” But that couldn’t be because most of the calls are from Massachusetts or Scotland or Vermont which means I’ll be boosting up the long distance bill with my return calls. Over forty bucks last month to return calls with mostly negative responses: “No, we don’t have openings that week.” “No, the boats are all rented that day.” “No, your resupply hasn’t arrived.” “No….”

I’ve tried Call Forwarding to my cell number, but I live in a dead zone that takes at least a half hour to get out of, then is followed by iffy reception and more dead zones. I could forward all the calls to the store at the lake, but everyone there would probably kill me for dumping my calls on them.

Most of the calls that I get in the car come when I’m being followed by either the sheriff or Highway Patrol. I sneakily open the phone in my lap and shout “I got a cop on my tail! Call back in five!” then snap the phone shut and look for a place to pull off the highway. That must instill lots of confidence in the legitimacy of our business! Now that I think of it, nobody ever calls back.

I am not going to wear a dongle on my ear and use Bluetooth because it takes 14 button-presses on my ancient Motorola Razr to connect to it, and I can’t justify buying a spiffy easy-to-use iPhone because my annual talk time is probably about ten minutes, mostly shouting about being followed by cops.

Maybe I can find a phone that would sense my return then play a cheery tune and say, “Bummer, you’ve got voice mail, but you’ve also got a nice cold beer in the fridge!”