will you accept a collect call?

the phone number at my new house sucks. it must have belonged to 100 different people before belonging to brett and me. every day when i get home from work my message machine blinks a promising 6 or 7 new messages. for a second i think i may be popular. but then i press the button to find that floyd anderson and jeannie have once again received more calls than me. then there are the telemarketer calls. i can lower my interest rate, i can consolidate my loans, and i can donate money to the police. this one really gets to brett because we recently got a ticket for parking on the wrong side of the street. we live on an "even/odd" street. this rule exists for the snow plows. but, the day we got the ticket they failed to plow our street. this kind of thing really sets brett off. so don't expect any money from us, coppers!

we received the strangest message last night. have you ever had someone call you collect? then you are familiar with the routine. that strange female voice sweetly says, "will you accept a collect call from" and then the person making the call will say their name. well, our call went a little something like this:

sweet female voice: will you accept a collect call from...
gruff, angry sounding male voice: JIMMY
sweet female voice: who is an inmate at the Kent County Prison.

huh? apparently "jimmy" used his one and only call to ring us, the Nelsons. and we didn't answer! if brett and i go missing, tell 'em jimmy did it. -SN