Games of Telephone
Spring 2005
“Hello.”
“Hello, can I speak to Sandeep Gumdogdoo?”
You have got to be fucking kidding me. It’s like the prank phone calls that little Bart Simpson used to make to the bar owner Moe, only somehow far worse. Do these jackasses think it’s creative? I realize that Indian names sound pretty silly to Americans, but this is a whole different level.
“No, this is XXXXX. I only recently just got this number.”
“Are you sure this isn’t the number of Sandeep Gumdogdoo?”
Stop saying that. It’s stupid.
“Yes, quite sure. You can call the carrier and see if he left a forwarding number. I’ve been getting these a lot, can I ask what this is about? I’m sorry, it’s just becoming a nuisance at this point.”
“This is a debt collection agency. Mr. Gumdogdoo owes us a LOT of money.”
Ah, the “debt" trigger. There’s no bill, no items, nothing, just this Kafka-esque burden that exists, without motivation or resolution, to call me back to my duties, whatever the hell that means. This was a Chi call. This was “return to cult". I pissed off the order again. Sweet
In subsequent calls, I found out he was involved in construction and allegedly ran out on his bills. With my most heartfelt apologies for the Gumdogdoos of the world, I’m sorry but I don’t believe it.
Under this pretence, this was one of the numerous phone calls I received here. I would blank out when I heard the name, and noticed how often they repeated it in its entirety. Correlating the calls with the events around me, I quickly realized this was meant to be some kind of pacifier. The more irritated I became, the more often these calls rolled in. This was a trigger call.
It needs to be said here that I never heard of these types of things. I thought hypnosis was used to quit smoking (and was always heavily steered away from it, but never knew why), mind control was for science fiction books, and spirits were for kids’ books. I was pretty much a devout atheist who had no idea about these kinds of things until about three years ago, and these calls rolled in as far back as eight.
On the other hand, I didn’t trust them from the moment I heard them, but now it makes a lot more sense. Still, I made sure to maintain composure and speak calmly, taking them as seriously as I could. At least thirty of these calls later, five years down the line, I got the call yet again, laughed in the woman’s face, and hung up the phone.
I never heard it again.