nothing like a little midweek mystery

I've told you all before about the drama that exists around my new-to-me Colorado phone number and the lady who possessed it previously, Shelley. Poor Shelley. She continues to receive collect calls from prisoners on the reg, so honestly I'm never super surprised when weird phone things occur. Like yesterday.

Another crucial layer of this story is that I am weird when I'm asleep. I'm a really deep sleeper to begin with, so when awoken I am almost always extremely confused/distraught in the minutes that follow. I'm not a sleep walker (praise the good Lord because sleep walking terrifies me) and I'm not much of a sleep talker, that I've been told. But every morning when my alarm goes off, my brain develops elaborate dream schemes to keep from registering that awful beep as a wake-up-signal. If it's the beep, I think it's some kind of siren. I changed it to bells for a while and I just kept dreaming that I was getting married in a Disney movie. It's the primary reason I oversleep and am late to most things on most days, and it's genuinely not a lie. What can I say? I sleep deep.

Yesterday I woke up at 6:42AM, turned off my alarm, and started putzing around on my phone only to notice something strange. Right there in my call log, at 4:43AM, was a red highlighted missed call from a number I didn't recognize. That's funny, I thought, I don't remember my phone ringing in the middle of the night. Even better? Right above it in black, clear as day: apparently, at 4:46AM, from a dead sleep, I called the unknown number back. And I engaged in some sort of 50 second long call with said number. Upon further inspection, it became evident that I woke up again at 5:34AM, and called it back again. This time the call was only 4 seconds long, but still. Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to wake up in the morning to find that not only have strange numbers been calling in the night, but without my conscious awareness, I have been calling them back?! It's not a great feeling. Not great I tell you.

My coworkers, furthering the proof that we are meant for each other, were all into solving the mystery at the lunch table later in the day. Barbara called the number back on her phone, and we're thinking we're pretty smart, that this is a trick we can use to find out who the mystery caller is. Was there any sort of plan beyond "call from another phone"? No. No there was not. An old woman answers:

Hello?
B: Hi, who is this?
Who is this?
B: Um, I... received a call from this number earlier
Well who is it?
B: Like I said... someone called me from this number...
It wasn't me. It may have been my husband. What is your name?
B: Barbara?
Barbara? Are you sure?
B: [confused] yes, I'm sure, I'm Barbara
Are you sure you're not Megan Greaves?

You may now cue the serial killer music.

I finally bit the bullet and called the mystery number myself. I mean, this person knew my whole name and the way she said it was like we were on an episode of Law & Order or something, and you don't just let that go, right? The old woman answered again. I told her I was sorry to bother her, that I had gotten a phone call in the middle of the night from this number and that according to my call log, I had called the number back (Possibly in my sleep, can you believe it! Allow me to put you at ease with my jokes and light-hearted tone!) and I wanted to be sure that I hadn't spoken to someone (in my sleep, remember that part?) and forgotten about it. She had clearly learned my name from the caller ID of my early morning calls. Which, by the way, she let me know she did not appreciate; she was actually mad at me for waking her up so early. I reiterated once again that I had gotten the call from her number first, and that I was just soverysorry for interrupting her morning, you know, in my sleep. After that she said something vague like, well I didn't call you and neither did my son. It could have been my husband but then YOU WOKE US UP and I'm crabby and irrational! That's what I heard, anyway. At some point she hung up on me, and I went back to the lunch table to report my sad, inconclusive findings. They weren't upset though, because while I was gone they'd picked up a new mystery to solve: the case of Trevor's roommate's potentially fake significant other. We've got some good leads, but nothing definitive just yet. I'll keep you posted.

I suppose the mystery lives on. I mean, probably it was a wrong number initially and then my dream-scheming caused a whole slew of problems by repeatedly stalker calling that poor old woman. I so feel it is also possible that her husband was trying to booty call Shelley, but I guess there's really no way of knowing for sure. What's even better is that later in the day while I was at work and my phone was in my pocket I BUTT DIALED THE NUMBER AGAIN. I'm positive that lady thinks I am a crazy stalker. I went ahead and deleted the number from my call log after that last little incident in order to prevent any future issues. I really can't afford any harassment suits at this point in my life. I'm far too poor.