After a strange series of crank calls this weekend, I was wondering how do you deal with strange calls? Evidently someone thinks my husband is either a German Jew or Nazi because of his German name which could be Jewish (Wolfgang and last name spelled with double n). I thought they were sales calls because they asked for him by his legal name and not by the name he goes by. By the time I realized what they were, the "message" was left and then the man hung up before I could respond. Oh, leveryone else is in the fast lane and I'm on the tricycle.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2001

Answers

Pooh, I can't type either.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2001

Once, my family blew a whistle forcefully into the mouth piece, which worked. These days, I'm afraid your tomentor would try to up you. If it continues, document the times and dates and the phone company will do a free trace. What a stupid bummer.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Usually, I use the caller Id to call the person back and ask where their mommy is. I really, really love caller id. Recently, I've gotten about 5 calls per week from the county jail. They have to call collect and if you hang up, let the machine get it, or just tell the operator "No," the person calling *still* doesn't figure out that they called the wrong number. I've tried yelling really fast, "Wrong Number!!!" (before the operator could hang up), but it didn't work.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Caller ID rules. But if that's not an option, tracking date and time and reporting to your phone company should work. At least they should be able to block the calls.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Well, I dunno if it works in your area but *69 works really well. I did that once and the prank caller was, to say the least, stupefied.

One of my friends goes along with the prank until the prank caller gets so annoyed that "he" hangs up. But that takes a lot of patience. And you have to know how to be really annoying on call (no pun intended).

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

The calls themselves didn't bother me so much as thinking about them later. What next, bombs in the mailbox? Anyway caller ID is great but I don't have it on all the phones and was expecting some other calls so picked up when I normally don't. The chicken bone hung up before I had a chance to slam him back. What kind of slams have you tried? If my 2 year old granddaughter had been here I would have handed her the phone as she loves to jabber on and on to real people. Works for sales people too.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

I heavy breath down the phone. This scares most people.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2001

I have an unlisted number, partially because I hate answering the phone and hearing strangers trying to pronounce my long, intimidating Greek last name. But having it unpublished cuts down on the number of calls we get, period, and I don't think I've gotten a single crank call in the past three years.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2001

I just put the phone down on the table and walk away. When I was little and would do prank calls with my friends (before the day of *69 and Caller ID) we'd love to get a reaction out of people, after all, that's kinda the motivation behind making them.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2001

WEeeelllll, caller ID doesn't really matter, does it?

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001