No More Telephone Games

This story goes across many years.

Hubbie knows that I don't like the ILs. The thing of that is, he accused me of acting on it when I didn't. He was caught between believing me and believing them.

One of the things that happened was a "telephone game". I did not know this was happening for quite a while.

They always called at dinner time. When, I was closest to the phone so I answered. When he was closest to the phone he answered. As we know, this is a time for many phone calls

Sometimes I would answer the phone and get a hangup call. This only happened every week or two, so I thought very little about it. Just assumed it was a tape that had not yet kicked in or a youngster or other rude person who had the wrong number.

Then during a fight about the IL's, Hubbie accused me of pretending that I didn't hear anybody on the phone whenever they called. At this point I had not added things up yet, I just accused him of lying because I really thought he was making it up. He went on to say, "I have been right in the room with you when you said "hello, hello", acted like you didn't hear anybody. Then my parents would call later in the evening and say "Oh, I see you got your phone fixed." Again, I just accused him of lying.

A few minutes later it occurred to me that the hangup calls must have been them. They hung up when they heard my voice (actually, they stayed on the line -- I did not get dial tones) then they said that I had done that to them.

I knew that telling hubbie what I figured out would do not good, so new stragegy.

Everytime I got a hangup/nobody saying anything call:
if he was home, I'd hand him the phone and say "whoever it is won't say anytying to me."
if he was not home, as soon as he got home I'd say "Call your Mother." He'd ask if she called. I'd say "somebody called and did not say anything." In neither of these cases, did he argue with me. I think maybe he figured it out.

Whenever I did *69, I got a message that they could not trace the call. (They were long distance...)

The next pivitol incident in this chain was the day his niece had a baby -- their great-grandchild. I believe it was their fourth? But this niece was their favorite grandchild. One afternoon, the phone rang at a time that he might have been home but he was working late. I think it rang multiple times that afternoon, I would not testify to being sure to that either way. Anyway, one time or multiple times, the caller said anything, so I told Hubbie when he got home to call his parents. When he asked why, I said because the phone had been ringing with nobody there. A few minutes later the phone rang and he was closest so he answered. I could tell he was talking to his parents. So I started screaming at the top of my lungs "Mighty Damn Funny, Mighty Damn Funny", something he often would say about things that he accused me of doing in relation to them. When he got off the phone, he told me about the baby. He told me what time the baby was born, which was before the first phone call, and he also said that they had been at the hospital at some time and had just gotten home. The "time" he gave of course was before I was called.

But, I do believe that after that he believed me and not them, but he did not tell me that. That was the last time that they called the house to my knowledge. After that (except for one time that I'll blog about later), they only called his Cell.

I also quit getting dinner time hangup calls.

Coincidental?


I have been hung up on the phone since that happened, though. I still suspected that they may be behind it for some stupid immature reason or another. FIL died in 2003. MIL died 2 months ago.

Here is the strange thing. Not one hang-up call, even the less frequent ones I got after the niece giving birth since MIL died?

Coincidence?