When The Phone Rang

This is the only creative non-fiction piece I've ever written. I was thinking about this event the other day and went digging for the story. It took place while visiting my friend in her hometown during a parish mission project she organized at her church that summer. With two other of our friends, she led faith studies, youth group, and prayer events. I joined them for a week, not only to help with their mission but also to enjoy the lake, the hiking trails, and the summer sun! Here is a comical moment that happened during my stay with this friend in her hometown. 

Names have been changed for privacy. 

July 2013

When the Phone Rang

Forks halt mid-air, halfway to the mouth; fingers stand still above a laptop keyboard; conversations pause abruptly, half-formed words left hanging… time itself seems to stop when the ring of a telephone slices through the air.

Such is the case when the phone rings anywhere, but it was especially noticeable at the Murphys’, because the phone just rang all the time.  And something else I noticed – that people never seemed to be able to find it.

“Where is the phone?”

If Mr. Murphy wasn’t there, Andrew was first to jump for the phone.

“Where is it?” he would ask. Then he would find it. (Then they would ask for Andrew and he would say, “this is the guy!”)

Sometimes I was tempted to answer the phone first. “Murphy residence, Selina speaking!” But I never did – perhaps because I was a guest, but mainly because I just never knew where the phone was.

But there were other problems that week than just the phone being in a different place than you saw it last. One day Mr. Murphy said to me,

“Do you know what makes a third-world country a third-world country?”

“What?” I asked.

“The lack of running water.”

So apparently we were living in a third-world country, in the Murphy residence, for about a day. The well had run dry.

It was Wednesday. The mission team and I were planning their first youth group meeting, which would take place at St. Joe’s parish Thursday night. Anna’s parents were not, but they kept on going up and down the stairs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt anything –”

“Oh no, it’s okay, we’re done,” we assured them.

“Okay good,” said Mr. Murphy. “I have to show you how to turn off the pump.”

This was in case the water stopped working again when they were not there. We all crowded into the tiny corner of the storage room where the pump switch and breakers were. Mr. Murphy began to explain the process.

“You do this – then you do this – then you do this…”

He stopped then, interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing. Mrs. Murphy reached for it first, picking up the hands-free phone that was sitting right there in front of us, right in that narrow space the six of us were shoved into. But Mr. Murphy beat her to it.

“Hello?” he said, after reaching across to a twenty-plus-year-old-model phone on the wall, picking up the receiver, and blowing off a large dust-bunny puffball sitting on the mouthpiece. 

“Oh. Clara, it’s your mother.”

Everyone watched Clara intently, in the centre, about four inches away from each person, because evidently life could not continue until this phone call was over.  Everyone except Mrs. Murphy, that is, who was staring down at the phone in her hand wondering what had just happened, exactly, and what she was supposed to do now.

The two phones in the storage room, when no one could ever find one anywhere else – how cramped we were as Mr. and Mrs. Murphy reached around us to answer the phones – the dust bunny flying off – the expectant way we all watched Clara answer the phone – a second later and the absurdity of all this hit us. The room exploded. The three of us burst out of the storage room and tumbled into the rest of the basement, doubled over with laughter, leaving poor Clara helplessly trying not to laugh into the phone as she spoke to someone (who was not her mother!), and leaving Mr. and Mrs. Murphy wondering what was so funny, exactly.

Well, now we knew – not only how to turn off the pump, but where we might find an extra phone or two in the house, too.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash