The Slice: Wrong number on line 1

Let’s pick up one more batch of wrong-number calls and then hang up on this topic.

Estellene Shaver has a phone number that’s close to the one for a Spokane Valley grocery store. She has been getting misdialed calls for about 40 years. Some she still remembers.

Once an elderly woman called and asked if she had reached the store.

Shaver told her that she had the wrong number.

“Are you sure?” the caller asked.

Lorelei Plagman remembers a call she received at 2 a.m. a few years ago.

“An irate lady insisted we had just called her house and woken her up. I informed that she had just woken ME up and must be mistaken since we were all asleep.”

The caller asked if she had children and, in her groggy state, Plagman told her that she had two. The caller then insisted that one of them must have made a prank call.

“I told her that since they were both in elementary school and both currently asleep they could not have done such a thing. The argument lasted another couple of minutes when she suddenly looked at her Caller ID and realized she had called back the wrong number.”

A friend of Karen Buck’s has a number close to that of a store that is now closed. She got lots of wrong-number calls. She mentioned this to people at the store and they essentially said “Tough.”

“So she stopped telling people they had a wrong number and instead answered their questions as she pleased.”

Among other things, she told callers that the store was open 24/7 and that futons were on sale for $9.95.

Saying it correctly: “I work for Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness, a nonprofit group dedicated to having the Scotchman Peaks of northern Idaho and western Montana designated by Congress as a National Wilderness Area,” wrote Sandy Compton. “It’s ‘Scotchman’ (singular, non-possessive) ‘Peaks’ (plural) but a huge number of folks, including some of our most active volunteers and an occasional board member cannot not call our group ‘Friends of Scotchman’s Peak Wilderness.’ No matter, we still know where our wilderness is.”

Today’s Slice question: Is there a deal with the devil you would consider?