Drunk Dialing

March 17th is a poor time to be on a business trip. But there I was, hunkered down in my hotel room after a fine Thai dinner, in Kelowna. I really don't know anyone in Kelowna other than clients and truth be told, I'm by nature more than a little anti-social. So the prospect of wandering out into that strip mall of town to search out the best facsimile of an Irish Pub just to stand in line for an hour for the chance to have a pint of Guinness with a clamour of green beer drinking strangers - well it just didn't seem worth it.
I was fading off to sleep when my phone rumbled to life startling both me and itself. I answered to hear my wife and friends shouting above the crowd. The highlight of which was Stephen yelling into the phone several times that he couldn't hear me. Funny only because he wouldn't wait for a response before yelling again that he couldn't hear me. Only to pass me back to Donna, who had no trouble hearing me.
The call made me think of university, when I switched answering machines. In second year I had the old tape style that Hollywood directors love where the message can be heard loud and clear in the room as it is being left. Third year I changed to the phone company style - where you call a number to hear the message. My best friends, Stephen and Claude, were living on the West Coast, while I was in school three time zones away. They would be out drinking and come home late and decide to call me. In second year I would wake up to them screaming into the phone, "Get up you fucker. I know your there. Come on. Get up..." In third year, I would wake up in the morning to find the same tirade waiting in a message that was usually 5 minutes long. Each time it would end with one of them turning to the other and saying, "... a fuck. He doesn't have that machine anymore."