So I’m driving home yesterday and someone had called my celly while I was at work and left me a voicemail. I hadn’t ever seen the number before and I set my phone aside for a bit to enjoy one of RJ Reynolds finest while I was sitting in traffic. I forgot about the voicemail for about 15 minutes or so when I got bored sitting on the road and decided to give it a listen.
“Hello, this message is for Ryan Morgan. This is suchandsuch (can’t remember her name) from Dr. Burns office. We just need you to call us back about a paternity thing. You can reach us at….”
What the heck? Surely, that message didn’t say what I thought it just said, must be the fumes from the exhaust of the cars around me (it was a nice day and my windows were down). Pressed the button to listen to the message again.
“Hello, this message is for Ryan Morgan. This is suchandsuch (can’t remember her name) from Dr. Burns office. We just need you to call us back about a paternity thing. You can reach us at….”
So after listening to this very message a second time, I immediately went from calm and relaxed to what I like to refer to as “Dude What the Fuck?!? Mode” or DWtFM for short. As you can imagine, my mind began racing. There were so many things to think about you have no idea. ***this is the point where any family should quit reading and just skip to the end*** My first thought was of my most recent girlfriend. I’m trying to think back as to when we broke up and I’m trying to do math in my head and although I’m usually quick with numbers, it just wasn’t adding up the way I wanted it to. Then, I got really mad. Then, I calmed down. Then, I stressed out. Then, I was almost thinking rationally. Then, I was not. I kept coming up with all these reasons about how there’s no way I could be a dad. Not that I couldn’t be a dad, just that it was impossible. As I’m told, you have to do stuff to have kids, and I haven’t done that stuff in quite some time. Again, the math wasn’t adding up in my favor, not that I could convince myself that at the time and so I’m back to flipping out. Finally, I realized she was not the type of person to hide anything, especially of this magnitude and I calmed down for a second.
Then I began to think of past “experiences” and entered my DWtFM all over again. I was thinking of the handful of people I’ve “experienced” and quickly eliminated those without kids. I thought of those with kids and tried to rationalize to myself why these kids can not possible be my offspring (looks like the husband, has red-hair, as well as other logistics concerning human gestation periods which is still 9 months I’m fairly certain).
I decide to not worry about it and accept my fate. I mean, I’ll be a really good dad, I’m sure of it, just wasn’t expecting to be one yet. I was actually on my way to visiting the folks after work since my mom just got back from being out of time. I could picture them asking me, “So what’s new with you?” and my reply, “oh, not too much, besides the fact that I’m gonna be a dad.” At this point there was nothing I could do, I calmed down and began to dial the number.
The phone almost started ringing when I hung up again. It was my last girlfriend, I just know it was. How could she not tell me about this? How can she only give me a couple of months to mentally prepare myself for a responsibility like this? I’m pissed, so I start to call her. Again, I hang up before it even rings. I’m so not going to be rational with her at this point in time and she’s (we) got bigger fish to fry right now than this argument that is about to happen. Then I remembered the last time I had a background check they got me confused with some dude with roughly the same name and same birthday from California. This is just all a big mistake. Relief! I think about how if it was official, they wouldn’t use my middle name (Ryan is not my first name for those of you who don’t already know that) to address me. But that sinking feeling begins to creep back in when I start adding together the facts that the doctor’s office called from a local area code, there’s a small chance that there’s another name similar to mine in this area code, they used my middle name, and they called me on my cell phone instead of the house phone nobody ever answers. Once again, things did not look good.
I dial the doctor’s office again, I need to speak to someone I don’t know just to get my head back on straight. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Shit, it’s after 5 o’clock there is NO way I can sit on this for the rest of the night. How does one even go to sleep not knowing whether or not they will be a dad tomorrow? Four rings.
“Hello, this is suchandsuch with Dr. Burns office, how can I help you?”
I tell the lady on the other end that I received a message to give this office a call. I purposely left my name out and tried to be as vague as possible.
“Oh, you must be Ryan Morgan.” I respond, “yes,” in a defeated tone. “Congratulations, your pregnant!” Dude, what the fuck?!?!?!?!?!? I tell her that I can’t be pregnant, that I, in fact, have the wrong plumbing to be pregnant. She laughs, “I mean you’re going to be a father! Congratulations!”
As you can imagine, I was completely dumbfounded as I happened to glance at my pale-white face in the rear-view mirror. We conversed a bit longer when I realized it was my friend Tonya playing joke on me. “Damn it Tonya, you’re a big piece of shit!” The lady on the other end of the line says, “Excuse me? My name is suchandsuch, there’s no Tonya here.” I laugh at her until I realize she’s serious, it is so not Tonya. A broken conversation ensues with another story from the past and I about flip out again as she brings up a girl that was completely batshit that I have only seen once in my life and spoken to twice and nothing ever happened and that was so long ago and how does she even remember me?
We talk a bit longer and the lady asks if I can remember back several years ago and if the whole Dr. Burns thing seemed familiar. Vaguely. This lady doesn’t understand that the magnitude of shit that’s flying around my head right now is kinda hindering my thinking/remembering abilities.
At last, I hear from the lady on the other end of the line, “Ryan, this is soandso. I spoke to your mom earlier today and she gave me your number and I thought I’d play a funny joke on you!” OMFG!!!!!!
It turns out the lady on the other end was an old friend of mine I used to teach with back in the day. We had a played a similar joke on somebody way back when, and since she hadn’t given me a hard time in the past year or so she thought it would be funny. Once, I realized everything would be okay, I laughed, very hard. I LOVE a good practical joke, however you generally have to get up pretty early in the proverbial morning in order to get one across on me. She succeeded in grand fashion. Although, this goes into my “Top 3 Most Scared Ever” moments, this is such a classically great joke that no hard feelings are had. I am a big fan of pulling this joke off on some poor unsuspecting soul, but I would recommend that you do not attempt this on somebody that could beat your ass and/or doesn’t have a problem with killing things.
Ry