What Did You Say You Rented?

"Good morning," my mother answered the phone. She always answered the phone with the appropriate greeting for the day. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. She answered every single phone call. My parents didn't have caller ID. They did have call waiting, but no caller ID.

Sometimes my dad answered the call, too, on one of the extensions in the house, and his greetings usually sounded like, "Jello." Where my mother's greeting sounded like Glinda the Good Witch, my father's greeting sounded like a bridge troll.

Every call involving a caller (like me) and the two of them became a conversation between the two of them where the caller (still someone like me) was a bystander. Good entertainment if I didn't have something they needed to know, something I needed to find out from them, or some kind of plan that needed to be made.

"Dan, get on the phone. Joanna is on the phone. I'm trying to tell her about today." My mother could have been an actress or director. She was a pro with stage direction and throwaway dialogue.

"Ma. Come back to me. I'm calling you. What about today?" I asked.

"Well, wait 'til your father gets on the phone. But guess what? You're never going to believe this. You know the phone in the basement and the one in the kitchen and the one by our bed?" she asked.

"Yeah..."

"We have been paying rent on those phones since 1978. Can you believe it? Almost 20 years! I could just go to Target or somewhere and buy another phone and plug it in, and then we could stop paying the phone company for rent on the phones."

"You're renting the phones? How does that even happen?" I asked. I had never paid rent for a phone. In fact, the phones in my apartment were phones I purchased at Target.

"When we built the house, we kept our old phone number, and well, we didn't have a choice. The phone company came and installed the phones. We never thought to question it later. I think we've paid over a thousand dollars in rent for the phones. Maybe more than a thousand dollars. Who knows?"

"Oh, my god," I said. "Please stop paying rent for the phones. Buy some new phones."

"We don't know how to install them on the walls, though. I mean the one in our bedroom is on the nightstand, but the kitchen and basement phones...we don't know how to do that."

"Mom. You and Dad are going to be those crazy, old people when you're 70 or 80 or whatever who have stacks of magazines from entering Publisher's Clearinghouse. Go to Target. Buy some phones. They have all kinds of phones."

"Jello? Joanna?"

"Hi, Dad," I said.

"Did your mother tell you about the phone rent business?" he asked.

"Yes. Buy some phones. Cancel the thing with the phone company."

"But what if they cut off our service?" Mom asked.

"Yeah. What if they cut off our service? How will we call people?"

"They aren't going to cut off your phone service," I said. "Don't you guys look at your phone bill?"

"No. It's the same every month, except for the long distance charges," Mom said, then swallowed what I figured was her morning coffee. "Guess what? We got a toll-free number. Now you and your sisters don't have to pay long distance to call us. Now Daddy and I can pay to talk to you. Isn't that great?"

"We're big time, Jo," Dad said. "We're 1-800-MOM-N-DAD. Just like the carpet people on TV. Connie, can you find that piece of paper with the toll-free number on it?"

I heard my mother rummaging around in the kitchen as she hunted for the paper with the toll-free number. While she rummaged around, I rummaged around for a pen and piece of paper in my apartment. I still had a corded phone. I had taken a firm stance on cordless phones. I knew I would forget to put it back in the base and recharge the thing, and I knew I would also forget where I left it. So stupid. If you were going to roam around while you were on the phone, buy one with an extra-long cord. Simple.

"Joanna," Dad said, "Your mother and I are going to the Flower Show today. Do you want to meet us for an early dinner?"

"I sort of have a date this afternoon, but I can bring him along. You guys can let me know what you think," I said.

"Is this someone special?" Mom asked, hope brimming in her voice.

"You both know I have terrible taste in guys. I'll just bring this one along, and you can meet him. If he's weird, then we write him off quickly. No harm, no foul," I said.

"We don't want to mess up your date," Mom said.

"I want to meet the guy, Connie. She's right. She has terrible taste in men. Remember the last one. He was awful," Dad said.

"He was not the best," Mom said cautiously. "But she loved him, and we agreed we would tolerate him."

"Oh, my god. You guys. This is why I want you to meet these people early. I don't want to waste time on someone who's defective. If there are alarm bells, I want to know right away," I said, and I knew I was begging.

"How long have you been going out with this guy?" Dad asked.

"It's our second date," I said. "He seems normal. Nice. Smart. No real red flags that I can tell, but I'm a terrible judge."

"Honey, of course," Mom said. I wasn't sure if the 'of course' referred to meeting the guy or if she concurred with my bad taste or poor judgment, but whatever.

We settled on a time and location. Jack met my parents on our second date.

The next morning, my parents called, and Dad was one one of the extensions. "We liked Jack," Mom said.

"I liked that one," Dad said. "We wasn't boorish. He seems like a good guy."

The seal of approval.

Six weeks later, my sisters and I purchased new phones for our parents at Target, and Jack and I drove an hour to their house. We coordinated with the phone company to remove the rented phones, and Jack hung the new phones in the kitchen and basement. Phone service was uninterrupted.

"How much do you think your parents paid for those rented phones," Jack asked one night when he called me.

"Who knows?" I answered. "Hold on a second. I have to get my popcorn out of the microwave." I put the phone down and ran into my tiny galley style kitchen.

"You really need to buy a cordless phone," Jack said.

"No. I refuse. I'll just lose it somewhere, and then it will run out of charge, and then I'll never find it," I answered. At this point, it was the principle of the thing. There were just some places I would never need to have a phone.