Long Distance Dedication

I was working at my desk when the classroom phone rang during my planning time this afternoon. That line is usually reserved to call kids to the office to pick up forgotten-at-home items or to speak to an administrator or go take their medication in the clinic. Rarely is it for me, although I remember the days when we had no phones in our classrooms. 

Then, messages were left in our mailboxes when we received a call, and we had to go to the office if we wanted to make a call, so it was an exciting day when they pulled phone wires through the ceiling and added wire moulding and jacks to our walls. Even so, long-distance calls were forbidden on the dial-nine-for-an-outside-line system. 

Coincidentally, we got wired internet at the same time, and boy! Did we feel connected. Of course, most of those issues became moot with the advent of cell phones and wifi. But we've kept the old landlines in our classrooms, anyway, and since kids are not allowed to use their personal phones in school, we have to teach them how to pick up the receiver, listen for a dial tone, and push actual buttons to make a call.

Today, though, when the phone rang, it was for me. A secretary in the office asked if she could connect a call from my doctor. "Sure," I told her, but I was puzzled. I hadn't contacted my doctor recently, nor did I have any upcoming appointments. Plus? My doctor has my cell number.

"Hang up, and I'll put the call through," she promised, and I skeptically did so; that particular feature rarely works on these phones, and sure enough, when I picked up on the second ring, all I heard was dead air. 

I hung up again, and the phone rang again. A voice on the other end of the line said, "Tracey? It's me, Amy!"

It was a friend from high school whom I haven't spoken to in at least 15 years, or as long as I've had my cell phone, because she didn't have that number. Calling from Arizona, she had tracked me down at work, and yes, she is a doctor, just not my doctor.

"I just said that so they would put me through," she laughed. "I'm so glad I got you."