Ring ring
My cell phone rang.
Who would be calling me this time of night? I thought. I was driving, but I pulled out the phone anyway.
The phone number it was showing wasn't a familiar one. 703 area code. I figured it was probably a wrong number, but also figured I might as well answer it, because otherwise they would leave a message and I would feel like I ought to call them back to let them know it was a wrong number, and they would insist they hadn't called me (that's happened three or four times in the past, though not from this 703 number).
Me: Hello, this is Jed.
Him: Hello.
Me: Um, who's this?
Him: Are you on a cell phone?
Me [trying to imagine what sort of scam or prank call this could be]: Yes. Who is this?
Him: You've got my cell phone.
Me [indignant but confused, wondering if there's some possible way someone else's cell phone could have made it into my waistpack]: I don't think so!
Him: Is this [he rattles off a number. It's much like mine, but with two digits reversed.]
Me: No. You have the wrong number.
Him [not believing me]: Then what's this number?
Me: [I tell him my number, and then repeat:] You have the wrong number.
Him: Oh. . . . Damn. . . . Sorry.
I was probably more impolite to him than I needed to be, but then he was fair tad bit more impolite to me than he ought to have been. It wasn't until the very end of the conversation that I figured out what must have been going on: someone from the Bay Area, traveling, lost his cell phone (or else it was stolen), and he was trying to find it by calling the number, and thought for a moment that he'd caught a stupid thief trying to use the cell phone as if it was his [my] own. But the fact that this guy didn't believe that he could have dialed the wrong number made him a lot more self-righteous than the situation in fact warranted.
Does everyone have phone conversations like this? This kind of thing happens to me with distressing regularity. Perhaps that's a sign that I need to work on my telephone communication skills.