The Joys of Modern Technology

"Damn these cordless phones, you forget where you put them," I muttered to myself after waking to its insistent, muffled beeping. "Who on earth could be ringing at this hour?" Finding it under the book on the bedside table, I inquired curtly. "Yes. Who's that?"

"That you, Cassie? You sound kinda funny." The voice was female, shrill and unmistakably American.

"There's nobody called Cassie here."

"But she must be there. I only live across the street and I saw her walk through the front door of her building with my own eyes not five minutes ago. Anyway, who are you? She lives on her own."

"Let me assure you, Madam, so do I. There is no Cassie here, and there is nothing across the street except beach and surf. You have the wrong number."

In the silence that followed, I disconnected, put the phone back on the bedside table and was just getting comfortable as it began to beep again.

"Is that you, Cassie?" I was asked in a now less strident and assured voice.

"No! I'm afraid it still isn't Cassie. It's the same wrong number, and I'm getting a little sick of this. After all, it is the middle of the night - or 3:30 in the morning, to be precise."

"Mercy me! Where are you?"

"Near Batemans Bay."

"Where's that? California?"

"No. In Australia."

"Lord have mercy! How is it that here I am in Cincinnati talking to you in Australia when all I'm trying to do is talk to Cassie across the street?"

"You could try dialling the correct number."

"But I don't dial a number. I just press this button on the telephone. Dwight... my son, fixed it for me. It's always worked before"

"Perhaps you could try dialling her number in the old-fashioned way or, as she is only across the street, why not just walk across and see her?"

She gave a long, deep sigh. "But that's the problem... No! There's no point in burdening you with my troubles. There's nothing you can do from the other side of the world. I'm sorry to have bothered you. I'll call Dwight..."

Half an hour later, I had just managed to get back to sleep when the phone beeped again. The American voice sounded very meek and mild now.

"I'm sorry to trouble you again, but it seems you are the only person in the whole world I can talk to on this telephone and I don't know what to do. I tried to call Dwight and ended up with some foreign woman. She was German, I think. Sounded like German to me."

She seemed genuinely distressed, so I took a deep breath and said, "But I don't understand what you want or how I can possibly help you."

She told me her name was Eleanor and she was calling from Cincinnati. She had been out shopping when she had fallen. She had only tripped but bones are brittle at her age, and she had fractured a leg and then a wrist when she fell. Someone had called an ambulance.

In the hospital, they fitted plaster casts to both her leg and her wrist and then, taking no notice when she said she lived alone, bundled her off home in a cab. The driver helped her into her apartment and on to the bed, and she now desperately needed to contact someone who could help her get herself organised.

"Have you tried dialling the numbers manually?" I asked.

"I can't remember them and my telephone book is by the living room phone. I can't reach it without a wheel chair, crutches or something."

I was wondering how I could possibly help her when an idea struck me.

"This might work. Give me your name and telephone number and Cassie and Dwight's full names and addresses. I should be able to find their numbers on the Internet and call one of them."

Finding the numbers had been much easier than my call to Cassie. How do you convince a suspicious, elderly American female that the man on the other end of her telephone is calling from Australia to ask her to go to the aid of her friend across the street who is in dire need of her help?

In the end, it was my Australian accent that did it, or so Eleanor told me when she phoned at a much more civilised time the following evening to say thank you.