Val's Information Is Secure. Especially From Herself.

Wednesday morning, I checked my cell phone, and saw that Hick had left me a text AND a voicemail. That's unusual, because if he tries to call and can't reach me, he just dials the house phone. Anyhoo...the text was unremarkable.

"I'm at Barber Shop"

That meant Hick would be out of my hair for a couple hours, minimum. More, if there was good gossip, or if two Baby Boomers got in a fistfight on the parking lot again.

I tried to listen to the voicemail, but it wanted a passcode. This happens EVERY TIME I try to hear a voicemail. I tried numbers that I use for stuff like that. Nope. No option to reset, or retrieve my passcode. I must have tried 10 times to get into that voicemail throughout the day. I asked Hick what it was, but he said,

"I didn't send you no voicemail."

"Oh. I guess you butt-dialed me while at the barbershop. Maybe it's a bunch of old men gossiping while they get their bald heads shined."

Normally, I would simply let it go. Forget about that voicemail. Except I couldn't, because it wouldn't get off my phone screen. Oh, once I tried to get in, and was denied, it was gone up to a little icon at the top. But every time I checked my phone again, it was a banner across the face. Making me think I had an email or a text, when it was the same dang voicemail that Hick didn't send. I was NOT prepared to go through life with that undeletable voicemail haunting me.

I sent The Pony a text, but he ridiculed me, saying that he never heard of any voicemail that needs a secret code to get into. "You just tap it, and it takes you to play the voicemail." Huh. Not on Genius's hand-me-down phone, it doesn't. Hick said to enter "7". "That deletes it. Just punch in "7" when the instructions start." Well. On my phone, "7" is an invalid passcode. Not an option to delete.

Hick had decreed a surprise trip to our new favorite casino that afternoon, and I was a captive passenger in A-Cad's shotgun seat. We were on the way home, stopped at a Goodwill, when I started fiddling with that voicemail again. I tried a selection of numbers I might ever have used as a passcode, and ONE OF THEM LET ME IN!!! Here's the voicemail, best I can remember.

"Hello. This is [woman's name] a bus driver from the school. I will be picking up William and Kirsten tomorrow morning at 6:33 on the sidewalk between the McDonald's and the motel. I hope I have the right person. See you then!"

Well. I guess SOMEBODY was late for school on Thursday. Because I have no idea who that was, or even if that school was in Missouri. It was not our area code, and I didn't recognize the number or the voice or the bus driver's name. Of course my phone would not show me the number that call originated from, only all the times I had made an outgoing call to the voice mail.

"I don't know if I should do anything. It's not like I can find out who, and call them back, and tell them it was the wrong number. It said "Dad" on the voicemail. That's why I asked if you sent it."

"Now why would it say "Dad" on your phone? It wasn't from ME. It wouldn't say "Dad", it would have my name."

"It most certainly WOULD say "Dad", because that's how you're listed on my phone."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes! Surely you don't think I set up this cell phone by myself! GENIUS did it, like he's done ALL my phones that used to be his. And every time, he lists you as "Dad" because that's what you are to HIM." I had to show Hick the screen, with his name as "Dad', while he was sweaving at 70 mph.

I don't know what's going on with this dang phone. I doubt that bus driver was a scammer, phishing with another number to leave a message about student pickup. And another thing, about this passcode...

When I was still working, our new technology guy recommended a password saver to the entire faculty. He said it was one he used for all his passwords! Pardon me, but my mind heard that REEEE of a needle on a phonograph record. Uh huh. A clash of two technologies.

We are cautioned NOT to write down our passwords! Not to leave them near the keyboard. On the off chance that a burglar might break into our house and hack our computer? Yet this supposed AUTHORITY on technology was telling us to save all our passwords in the same place ON THE INTERNET!!! That would be akin to having SATAN watch over a SOUL! Asking an ALLIGATOR to babysit an INFANT! Having HICK hold onto your HOT DOGS for safekeeping!

Don't even get me started on that cell phone number keypad that disappears when the screen goes black as you're trying to navigate through an automated phone system.