Barbara J. Hamby

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Spooked

Some recent events are pushing me to the brink of paranoia. First, I bought a new cordless phone. For four or five nights now, ever since we hooked it up and charged it, it plays a song (similar to a cell phone ring) for several minutes every twenty-four hours. This occurs regularly at 1:00 a.m. This new phone does not have such a ring setting.

Today I called the company, since I couldn’t learn anything helpful from the manual or their website. The technician was stumped, obviously, and assured me there was no alarm on the phone. She suggested that I “reset” the phone and if that didn’t work, return it to the seller for an exchange. She then switched me to a recording that gave me detailed instructions for resetting the phone and suggested I write them down. If I couldn’t write fast enough, I could have the instructions repeated by pressing “1,” the narrator assured me. Wrong; when I tried, there was only silence on the line. I’ll give resetting (as I remember it) a shot and see what happens.

Just after the above call, I made myself a cup of tea. The tea bag stained the inside of the teacup in a fascinating pattern. Part of it looked like a drawing of a dog with a perfect head and something in its mouth. There were two different interpretations of the rest of the picture. Al thought it looked like a turkey. I thought it looked like a giraffe. No, we weren’t smoking or drinking anything other than tea or broth.

Any amateur psychologists out there are welcome to offer interpretations of these phenomena.