Calls for Andre

He wasn't paying my landline bill. But he sure was getting plenty of calls on it.

The 21^st century had just begun-we still had a landline-and an answering machine. Sure, people had cell phones they carried with them everywhere but most of us still didn’t trust cell service enough yet to “cut the cord”. Text messaging was maybe invented… I’m not sure, but certainly not common. People left messages…on your answering machine. When you got home you would see that little red beeping light with a number next to it indicating the number of messages on your machine. We checked ours regularly when we got home. This is the message left on our machine one afternoon: “Andre, do not break into that house. I repeat, do not break in. They’re home!”

To be clear no one named Andre lived in my home. And I didn’t know anyone named Andre. The caller didn’t leave a call back number…and I don’t recall if we had caller ID. I should’ve left well enough alone, but I was concerned. Depending on when Andre was planning this burglary he had already or was about to unwittingly frighten some unsuspecting homeowners.

I decided to call the city police to report it. We lived in North Kansas City, MO at the time. That’s a quaint little town with its own jurisdiction, you guessed it, just north of Kansas City. Here’s how that phone call went.

Them: North Kansas City Police!

Me: Oh hi, I just got a phone message from someone saying some guy named Andre is going to break into a house and he shouldn’t because they’re home but I don’t know any Andre so I don’t know maybe ya’ll could come listen to my answering machine and figure out who this guy is?

Pause.

Them: Ma’am, this isn’t CSI.

They were referring to the hit TV drama in which the fictional detectives with great hair, cool sunglasses and ample resources solve murders in under an hour on a weekly basis. I wasn’t expecting that! But couldn’t they trace the number? Find an address or something? They said they could send an officer to my house to fill out a report if I wanted. But that’s all they could do. Well, I thought, I guess this guy Andre is going to break into that house and there’s nothing I can do about it. I washed my hands of it.

This should be where this story ends. But no, my dear readers, it is not. We continued to get messages on our machine for Andre albeit no others that I thought required a call to the police. Not that they would help! We figured people heard our machine greeting spoken in my Southern drawl “Hi, you’ve reached Andrew and Davina. Leave a message after the beep” and thought they had the right number. Or maybe they just didn’t listen to the greeting at all?

Sometimes we would get calls for Andre when we were home. My husband would answer the phone in his Southern drawl “This is Andrew!” And they would start talking to him like he was Andre! He usually let them go on for a minute or two and then politely let them know he was not Andre and they had the wrong number. I think he found the calls entertaining.

I remember once I answered the phone. I think it was the only time I answered an Andre call. She was not happy about a female answering.

Her: Who is this? Where’s Andre?

Me: Oh, oops! You have the wrong number. Bye!

Why were so many people calling for Andre? We’d had our number for awhile, so likely it wasn’t because he had the number before us. Maybe his number was one number off from ours and people were just misdialing. But that many misdials in such a short amount of time? Thinking back, I wonder why we didn’t just start asking callers what number they thought they were dialing? Hindsight is 20/20 even though my vision is not anymore.

One day I went to visit a friend of mine, Sally. She lived in Kansas City, Kansas. If you don’t know, the Kansas City metropolitan area sits right on the border between Missouri and Kansas. There are two Kansas City’s. One is Kansas City, Missouri and one is Kansas City, KS. Kansas City, Missouri was established before Kansas City, Kansas. But I digress.

Since my friend lived on the Kansas side she had a different area code than me-hers was 913 and mine was 816. I had to remember to put in the area code when I saved my Kansas friend’s number to my cell phone. But all my Missouri friends, my husband’s cell and my landline had only the seven-digit number saved in my cell phone. It was pretty common back then to just dial a seven-digit number if the person you were calling had a local number. I recently learned it is actually mandatory as of 2022 to call the ten-digit number to get a call through even if you have the same area code. I’ve been careful to dial the ten-digit number of every person I call since some time in the early 2000’s. Here’s why.

While I was visiting with my friend in Kansas, I must’ve needed to tell my husband something. Sally and I liked to go out on the town together so I bet I was telling him where I was going. Andrew wasn’t with me but I knew he was home. So I called our landline. And guess who answered the phone?

Him: Hello.

Me: Andrew?

Him (in a sexy voice): This is Andre! Who is this?

Me (panicking): I’ve got the wrong number. Click.

I know, I know I probably should’ve given Andre all his messages…but I was in shock…I guess Andre somehow got that message not to break into that house or he was out on bail?

With my accidental phone call we figured out Andre had the same seven-digit phone number as us. But his area code was 913 while ours was 816. And since I was at Sally’s house…voila I got Andre. And when his friends, family and…associates? were on the Missouri side they got us.

The FCC made 10 digit calling mandatory as part of the plan to implement the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline back in 2022. A worthy cause. But if they would’ve done it a couple decades sooner, they may have prevented Andre from possibly/maybe committing a crime. And I would not have a story to tell.

It didn’t take long after that for cell phones to get more dependable and affordable. It soon became the more frequent and likely way to reach someone. We kept our landline probably longer than we needed to. It got to the point where the only people who called our landline and left a message were my mom (who would leave a 2-minute message about her week and then immediately hang up and dial my cell phone. Then if she could not reach me there, call Andrew’s cell phone) and people calling Andre. My husband and I discussed it. We decided to cut the cord. I haven’t had a landline since. Now the only unwanted calls I get are people wanting to buy my house for bottom dollar or sell me health insurance. And I tell them they have the wrong number.