Car Phone

Calling Jeff Goldblum

My car, the Chevy Sonic Turbo, recently turned 12 years old. I’ve had it for 10 years myself, and together we’ve enjoyed a decade of driving. I love my car, but the one thing that drives me crazy, and I’ve discussed this before, is the fact that the hands-free calling is very archaic. There are a lot of commands to go through, and it has a terrible time recognizing simple names like ‘Ken’. As a result, I changed ‘Ken’ to ‘Kenneth’ in my contacts list, but even still, it invariably asked me, “Did you say ‘Kenneth’? as if I have some thick accent that makes my requests indiscernible. But then on Friday, this happened. I was driving back from the bank in another town, but I’d stopped off at the Restore Store, and wanted to let Ken know about the cool lamp I found. I hit the call button on my steering wheel:

Car Lady (because it’s a female voice): Ready.
Me: Call.
Car Lady: Call. Using ‘Suzanne’s phone’. Please say the name or number to call.
Me: Kenneth.
Car Lady: Did you say ‘Jeff Goldblum’?
Me: What?
Car Lady: Pardon?
Me: ???
Car Lady: Please say a command.
Me: Call!
Car Lady: Call. Using ‘Suzanne’s phone’. Please say the name and number to call.
Me: Kenneth!
Car Lady: OK. Calling ‘Jeff Goldblum’ using ‘Suzanne’s phone’.
Me: What the f*ck?! (hangs up)

I sat there for a minute, not sure what to do. Jeff Goldblum? Then I realized that years before, I had received a link to get text messages from Jeff Goldblum, which I thought at the time might be a scam. I had received an initial text from him that said this:

Which is exactly what someone who WASN’T Jeff Goldblum would say, am I right? At any rate, Jeff Goldblum really WAS in my contacts list, but that didn’t explain why my car phone lady was trying to get me to call him. Was it a sign from the universe? But I didn’t want to talk to Jeff Goldblum, I wanted to talk to Ken, although I’m sure Jeff Goldblum would have been breathlessly ecstatic over my lamp find, if the way he acts in most of his movies is any indication. I pressed the car phone button on my steering wheel again:

Car Lady: Ready.
Me: Call.
Car Lady: Call using ‘Suzanne’s phone’. Please say the name or number to call.
Me: Kenneth!!
Car Lady: Did you say ‘Jeff Goldblum’?
Me: No, you stupid woman! Kenneth!! Kenneth!!
Car Lady: OK, calling ‘Kenneth’.

The whole situation was so bizarre that I decided to investigate. And you know what? It turns out that the text number IS actually Jeff Goldblum. Here’s a link to his Facebook video from November 2019 announcing that if you set his number, 310-620-6558,as a contact, he would text you with updates about his career: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=529097061000888 But I guess he got bored very quickly of the whole thing, because I haven’t had a message from him since 2022. Yes, I got ghosted by Jeff Goldblum. And I’d gotten over it, years ago, so thanks Car Phone Lady for re-opening that wound.

Speaking of wounds, Ken once again managed to almost lose a digit on the table saw. This time it was his thumb. And this time, I was a little less sympathetic—I mean, the first time, it’s a terrible accident; the second time, it’s more like, “WHAT DID YOU DO?? WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT WAITING FOR THE BLADE TO STOP SPINNING?! Even the doctor at the hospital (who had sewn him up last time) asked, “Is this ‘weaponized incompetence’? (which is where you do something so very badly that no one asks you to do it again) to which I replied, “I didn’t ask him to build a shed! He WANTED to do it!” and the doctor said, “Oh, I wasn’t talking about him,” and I said, “Are you referring to the way you’re stitching up his thumb? Because yes, I’m hoping we never have to ask you to do this again,” and we all laughed. Except for Ken, who was grimacing in pain.

In other news, last week, I had a lot of people ask for pictures of my cute boots, so here they are:

Adorable, yes? Jeff Goldblum would love them.

Intruder Alert

A few days ago, I was driving home from work and decided to call Ken. If you may remember, I was railing a while back about my car phone lady, who can never recognize Ken’s name. But this time, when I said, “Call Ken,” she right away responded with “OK, calling Ken.” Or at least that’s what I thought she said. But when the call got picked up, a very deep, very suspicious male voice said, “Hello?” and then I looked at my phone control panel and realized it said ‘Cam’. And I was like, “Who the f*ck is Cam?!” I don’t know ANYONE named Cam except my 12 year-old nephew, and he doesn’t have a phone, and also, how after ALL THESE YEARS of the car phone lady not recognizing the name Ken, is she suddenly able to understand CAM?!

So I mumbled something weird about trying to call my husband, sorry wrong number etc., and he hung up on me. At which point, I remembered that I’d changed Ken’s contact to Kenneth in a futile attempt to make my life easier, which it HAS NOT, but I called him anyway after several moments of conversation with the car phone lady during which she peppered me with questions like “Did you say Karen? Did you say Nancy?” until I finally got through to Ken.

Me: Do I know anyone named Cam, aside from our nephew?
Ken: I have no idea. Why?
Me: Because my car phone just called some rando named Cam, and I don’t remember putting anyone with that name in my contacts.
Ken: Did you ask him?
Me: No. I think he thought I was from one of those duck cleaning services and he hung up on me.
Ken: Duct.
Me: If I’m going to be a telemarketer, then I’m definitely cleaning ducks.

And I still have no idea who Cam is. I tried reverse look-up on the number but all I could find out is that it’s a cell phone in Toronto, so the mystery remains unsolved.

Then things got even more mysterious and a little scary on Thursday. I’d been out all morning thrifting and scored some fantastic deals. I walked up to the door of the house with my arms full of stuff, and sniffed the air because it smelled strongly of freshly brewed coffee, which to some of you might seem heavenly but to me, who despises coffee, all it meant was that Ken had come home early from volunteering in the food tent at a tractor show, as one does, and had snuck in a cup behind my back. So I opened the door, fully expecting to see him in the kitchen savouring his brew, but he wasn’t there. Atlas seemed very pleased that I was home, but there was no sign of Ken anywhere. Then I noticed that the door to the family room, which I’d closed before I left, was wide open. Maybe Ken was outside. But no. Strange. I started organizing my thrift shop finds when I realized that there was a noise like running water coming from the back bathroom, so I went to investigate. The hot tap was running. So I got a little nervous and texted Ken, and while I was doing that, Atlas suddenly took off upstairs and started running around up there like he was looking for something. When I called him, he refused to come down right away and stood at the top of the stairs like he was worried, which made me feel even more nervous.

Me: Hey buddy, whatcha doing?
Atlas: Jus’ lookin’ around.
Me: For what?
Atlas: Things. Peoples.
Me: Can you come back down?
Atlas: Did you say ‘Cam’?

Then Ken responded that one of our neighbours had called him a little while ago, but he couldn’t take her call because he was busy frying onions or something, and all I could think was that she’d seen someone lurking around, someone with a large cup of coffee perhaps, and that she was trying to alert us, and then I got REALLY SCARED. Ken offered to drive home but he was half an hour away and up to his elbows in onions and whatnot, so I did what any normal person would do. I walked across the street to the church that’s being renovated and asked the very nice man who owns it (you may remember him from the porta-potty escapade) if he could come back with me and help me search my house. And I can only imagine how a request like that might be perceived, like “Hi, you don’t really know me but I think there’s a psychotic coffee-drinking killer in my house, so could you be a dear and flush him out for me?” But I really was almost in tears at this point, and he immediately followed me back. I put Atlas outside, much to his dismay, and the very nice man and I went through the place together, opening all the closets and making sure the attic and basement were locked, much to my relief.

After the very nice man was gone and it seemed like we were safe, Atlas and I looked at each other:

Me: That was quite an adventure.
Atlas: Can I come in now?
Me: Did you say Cam?

Cam?