Phone call from Dad

When you live nearly 700 miles away from your parents, it's always a bit disconcerting to receive a call from one of them at work. You immediately think the worst has happened and start preparing your heart for a bad fall. That's what I did with my heart, at least, when my dad phoned me at work today. Nothing at all was wrong, though. Dad merely wanted to know what name I went by back when I was DJing on the radio in Charlotte, NC.

Dad said he'd been doing his morning check of Statcounter for his website when he noticed someone from the The Charlotte Observer had come by for a look at some of his favorite sub-pages. Dad was quite curious as to what a major newspaper would be doing at his site. So much so that he gave them a call to find out. Nothing major was up on that front either. It turns out the visit came from a couple of guys down in the mail-room who were goofing around on the net and stumbled on the page by mistake. However, during the conversation(s) Dad had in order to gain that tidbit of information, he managed to mention that he had a son who used to work in radio in Charlotte a few years back. At that point, the person at the paper asked what my on-air name was, in case they knew me. Dad wasn't sure, but promised to call them back once he'd found out.

"It was Erik Winston," I told him. "Just like it was when I worked in Tupelo. I doubt they know anything about me, though, cause I only DJed on the weekends."

Dad seemed happy with this and we soon hung up. Less than a minute later, he phoned again to ask what station I'd worked at.

"107.9 The Link," I said. He hung up again and was off on his next adventure.

At that point, I looked up at Mrs. C and said, "How come my dad in Mississippi can manage to find the phone number here without a phone book, yet nobody in town can manage to find it with one?"

"That's a good question," Mrs. C said.

I say "nobody" can find our number in the phone book, but from the number of calls we receive each day obviously some people are able to find it. However, we do get quite a few calls from people who've had to phone other libraries in order to get our number because "It ain't nowhere in the phone book." They're always real loud about letting us know this, too. That's when we politely ask them to take their phone book out and turn to the business section and look up TRI-METRO County Public Library, `bout mid way down the second column on the page. They get a lot quieter then, but often still insist that they looked there before and we weren't listed then.