I woke up hung over and reached for my phone. 48 missed calls and 11 voicemails. Holy shit! What the heck happened last night? I looked at the call log and was at least relieved to see that I didn’t recognize any of the numbers, but my overall confusion increased which in turn worsened my headache. I decided to take a cold shower and drink a cup of coffee before I attempted to make sense of things.
While I was in the shower the phone rang 6 more times and then another 5 times during my morning coffee ritual. My head was throbbing and my tongue felt like a dry towel. My first guess was that one of my hooligan (i.e. probably one of my closest) friends had pulled some sort of prank on me and that listening to the voicemails would explain everything. The first voicemail was from a very angry man, probably middle-aged: “Go fuck yourselves you cocksuckers!”. Ok, that didn’t explain much. The second voicemail was from a lady that sounded like she was 100 years old. “My name is Rita, I live on XXXX street in Dover. What is this all about?”…….. Even more confusing. Third voicemail. Another ancient lady: “I want to know what kind of scam this is?” Fourth voicemail: “I just want you to know that I’ve called the local police.”
Completely bewildered and with a headache so strong at this point I was worried that I might be having a brain aneurysm, another call came in. I decided to answer it. “Hello?” Two seconds of silence (the other end of the line was clearly surprised that I picked up) and then some dude started ripping into me. “You actually picked up you piece of shit, how dare you call my father and……….” At this point I interrupted him and said: “Sir, sir, please don’t yell at me, I’ve been getting calls all day from random people, I’m hungover, I have no clue what’s going.” My plea got him to stop and calm down. He asked me. “So, you’re not some scammer from India and you’re not the IRS?”. I told him that I was just an average guy with an increasingly painful hangover. At this point I finally got some clarity. It turns out that some robocall went out across half of Delaware (primarily targeting elderly residents). The robocall told people that they owe tons of back-taxes to the IRS and to wire it to XXXX account. If they had questions or concerns, they could call MY DAMN NUMBER! So, there I was, Saturday morning, hung over from a night of clubbing, with a mixture of angry and confused people calling my phone and blasting me with hatred. I called AT&T to see what I could do about the situation but they, like many of my callers, basically told me to Go F Myself. I decided to turn my phone off for the day, cure my hangover, and see if the calls would slow down by Sunday. I was also very grateful that I’d never set up a proper voicemail. I have no plans of going to Delaware anytime soon but I don’t want to end up getting my ass kicked at a random restaurant in Dover sometime in the future because someone recognizes the name on my credit card and remembers that I tried to scam their old man out of his retirement.
Who knows? Maybe it was one of my friends who lives abroad or one of my cousins back in the old country launching a bunch of anonymous skype-based robocalls and throwing me under the bus. Perhaps it was that kid Truman from study abroad getting his revenge after we gave his email out to all these gay, bondage, internet meet-up groups years ago. Apparently at one point the dean of his college brought Truman in for a chat because the campus email system was blocking/filtering dozens of lewd and lascivious emails coming his way each day. Can you imagine the embarrassment associated with that meeting: “So, Truman, we flag and block about 20 emails a day, intended for you, coming in from perverts across the world, inviting you to a series of very unique events.” How does the rest of that conversation go!? Oh man, to have been a fly on the wall for that one!
The more I think about it, I guess I’m just getting my comeuppance. What a random turn of events. Of all the numbers to have given as your fake contact information, it had to be mine. Now I’m just hoping that the Delaware PD doesn’t cooperate with my local PD and bring me in for questioning. Even if they do, at least nobody will be inquiring about and speculating as to what tickles my sexual fancy.