
Grandma just couldn’t get the hang of it. She didn’t grasp the concept of answering machines. Whenever she called someone and the answering machine picked up, she couldn’t understand that there wasn’t a person on the other end, and she’d start saying, “Hello, hello, hello, it’s Grandma,” and when the voice kept talking over her, she’d get angry. And then, when she heard the tone and thought she had been hung up on, she got even angrier.
We all tried to teach her how to use the voicemail box we set up for her on her own phone, but when she listened to the messages, she didn’t realize that it was just a recording and not an actual person talking to her.
We left Grandma little notes, like “After the tone,” and “Leave us a message.” But even that didn’t work.
One day, Grandma got so angry that she called her lawyer with the intention of cutting us all out of her will. Sadly for her, and fortunately for us, her phone call to the lawyer went right to voicemail.
Grandma’s now gone, but the one thing we all have to remember her by was the voicemail message she left for the lawyer. Who knew the old bat could use such salty language?
Written for Sadje’s What Do You See? prompt. Photo credit: Taylor Heery @ Unsplash.