I Had the Most Fun Messing Around With a Person Who Texted the Wrong Number

When I was a kid I was allowed to answer the phone. This was in the 1980s when smartphones were still a decade or more away. This was the era of corded phones with no caller ID.

I was told by my parents to answer the phone with my full name: "This is Jeffrey John Parsons speaking."  I don't know what their reasoning was, especially my full name including my middle name, but I did it.

We got wrong numbers occasionally back then too. They were a lot more common because of misdials on rotary phones that looked like this one that I found on eBay. It can be yours for $49.99 or best offer. Good luck finding a phone jack though.

Today we have the world at our fingertips with smartphones. The ability to send text messages makes things a lot of fun for me when I get a wrong number text. Take a look at this one I got a few years back that I have made sure to save. Wrong number guy is in yellow while I am in blue.

No, I don't smoke pot, that is wicked random and I do like pot roast. I didn't stop there though because he thought I was April.

So this response back needs a little explanation. One of my favorite movies of all time is Fletch staring Chevy Chase. He's a wisecracking newspaper reported out undercover for a story. This is where the shepherd line come from.

The guy looking for April and some pot realized he had the wrong number, so I hit him with another Fletch line.

And here's the reference from Fletch.

Was what I did wrong? I don't think so. Was it fun? Oh yes, it was.