On the drive up, I got a call from an unknown number. The person on the other end was slurring and very hard to understand, but I got the gist that he had the wrong number. I told him so and hung up. Twenty seconds later he called again. Again, I told him he had the wrong number, again we hung up, again he called...
Now, if you know me at all, you'll know I'm really not a phone person. And sometimes this leads to my New York 'tude coming out. By the last phone call, my voice was raised as I told him that it was the wrong number and to STOP CALLING.
About thirty minutes later, I got a phone call from another unrecognized number. It was a different person on the other end, but he still was hard to understand and it was still a wrong number.
Twenty minutes after that we had reached the venue (a country inn) and the moment we stepped foot into our room...I get another phone call from yet another number.
This time it was a woman calling and she at least was enunciating. So I managed to ask her whom she was trying to reach. "The bail bond office," she told me.
It was around this point I realized that the people calling me before, who, um, I had yelled at, were calling me from jail.
It was also around this point that the innkeeper came around to give us the "wedding tour."
So in between talking about wine selections, butlered hor d'oeuvres and dance floors, this was the thought that was running through my head. "Is my phone number scrawled on the wall of a jail cell somewhere?!"
Which, for the record, is much more frightening than I expected, being a devoted fan of that awesome Tommy Tutone song and all.
At some point between looking over the lake that would be the ceremony site and the barn that would be the reception area, I got about three more phone calls. It was very hard to concentrate on whether there'd be a DJ or a band.
When we got back to the inn, I called AT&T to see if they could block the calls. They said no; the only thing I could do is change my number.
You guys, I have a 917 number. If you live in NYC, you know what I'm talking about. (Or if you've seen Sex and the City...917 is totally the new 212). Also, it's the only cell number I've ever had. I did not want to change it.
Before dinner, I spent some time fretting over this new development. After dinner (and while we were supposed to be paying attention to the quality of the food), I suddenly had an epiphany.
The one woman who had called me from outside of jail (and in a clear voice) had given me the name of the bail bond company. I looked them up. They had an office in Nassau County on Long Island (where all of my calls had been coming from)...and they also had a main number. I had a suspicion that someone had accidentally punched in the wrong number (mine) when forwarding calls from the Nassau office.
So I called the main office.
The conversation went something like this.
Bail Bond Dude: Bail Bond.
Me: Hi. I'm calling for rather an odd reason. I think that someone from your Nassau office has accidentally forwarded all of your office phone calls to my phone. The result being that you're losing business and I'm getting about 50 phone calls from jail.
BBD: Oh s***...please hold.
Thankfully, BBD was on top of his game. He got back on the phone with me about a minute later and said someone was going to the office immediately to fix the situation.
I received no more phone calls from jail.
For what it's worth, we also decided against that venue.
The End.
