This Is This

My phone rings during a meeting. The number of the screen is a local number of where I live, so I assume it’s my wife. I take her calls because I can always be brief.

I press the button. “Babe. I’ll call you back, OK?”

“Um OK,” she sounds different and uncertain.

“It’s just I’m in a meeting. Everything OK?”

“Um. Yes. Fine.”

She sounds really different. Oh shit.

“Who is this?” I cringe.

“Dr. Burn.”

Bugger. Local number. Local doctor. Whose call, now that I think about, I was expecting. I called her “babe”. My options are to either apologise, or crack a joke.

Any guesses?

“Sorry,” I say, “I’m not normally that rude to people who aren’t my wife. Heh.”

“Right,” she says, unflinching.

“Would you mind terribly if I call you back, doctor?” The posh thing. When humour fails, try the posh thing.

“That would be fine.”

“Sorry again. I am in a meeting.”

First impressions, eh?

Also, you wouldn’t be the first to see the irony in having a doctor named after an injury. It’s like it having a pilot called Captain Nosedive, or a speech therapist called Professor Stammer.

Also on This Is This
I read a story today about the warmongering US Vice President’s supporters that included the words “Cheney’s hawks” and now I can’t get “I Am The One And Only” out of my head.
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