My Secret Admirer

So, I wake up the other morning, get ready to go about my day, and grab my cellphone as I go out the door. Oh, look! I have a message! That's always nice, let's see who it's from...

Message: Ciao

Just Ciao? From a phone number I don't recognize? Sent at 12:10 a.m.? Okay, must be someone who got the wrong number, but for curiosity's sake, I respond...

Me: Ciao, but who are you?

Immediately, I get the following message...

Person X: I am your secret admirer!!! So, I can't tell you who I am!!!

What? What's going on here? I don't really want to have a secret admirer, thank you very much. This must be a friend playing a joke on me. So I respond...

Me: Tell me who you are or don't write anymore.

My Secret Admirer: Well, I can tell you that my name is domenico, but you don't know me, and I'm a good friend of mauro p.

Me: Who is mauro p?

My S.A.: Mauro papagna (names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent!), don't you know him??

Me: The 12-year-old boy?

My S.A.: Yes, him!!

Me: And are you 12, too?

My S.A.: No, how old are you?

Me: Who do you think you are writing to?

My S.A.: To Sara, but anyway, how old are you?

Me: 47 and I'm Danny's mother.

Let us pause here for a moment to imagine the shock and subsequent panic that this poor little boy must have felt upon realising that he is trying to flirt with an old lady, and the mother of a friend of a friend, worse yet!

My horrified S.A.: And I thought that you were a pretty girl, from what mauro told me. That bum played a joke on me, just wait till I get ahold of him!! Please forgive me, I didn't mean to bother you, forget everything, pretend it never happened. See you later!!!

Me: Don't worry...no harm done. But tell Mauro not to give my phone number out to anyone else!

Just plain Domenico: Of course, I will right away. ciao

And so we ended up where we began, with a "ciao." And no secret admirer for me! LOL!

Mistaken Identity

It all began last Friday. The phone calls. First just a couple.

Me: Hello?

Caller: Hello, I'm calling from XYZ School in the Veneto region. Am I speaking to Maria Rossi? (Let's just use this alias to protect the innocent.)

Me: No, I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number.

Caller: Well, let me just check. Is this 1234567891?

Me: Yes, it is, but I'm not Maria.

Caller: Well, this is the number we have in our data. Could you tell Maria we called?

Me: I don't know Maria. There must be some mistake.

Caller: Maria has won a post as a substitute teacher at our school and we absolutely must inform her. (pregnant pause... like they expect ME to do something about it)

Me: Look, I'm sorry, but I'm not Maria, my name is Saretta. I don't know Maria. I don't live in the Veneto region. I live in the province of Bari and I am not looking for a job!

Caller: Oh well then, goodbye...

Take this conversation and multiply it over the next 3 days by...oh, I don't know...about 30 I would say. Just about enough to drive me mad.

There were various "types" of callers in the bunch. I divide them into 3 basic groups: 1) those who thought the mix-up was a good laugh and were good-natured about the whole thing; 2) those who were surprised and concerned and begged my forgiveness for having bothered me unnecessarily; and 3) those who wanted Maria Rossi from me, come hell or high water!

These, as you can imagine, were the worst. I found myself trapped in impossible conversations with school officials with bull-dog like tenacity. I learned all kinds of interesting facts about Maria that certainly should never have been given out to a complete stranger on the telephone.

Caller: Are you sure? Were you, by chance, born in Naples in 1967 and are now currently a resident in (town's name)?

I had to just bite my tongue not to respond, "Oh, yeah, now that you remind me, that is me! I am Maria! How could I have forgotten?"

After call number 35 or 36 I had to take things into my own hands. Not only was I being driven crazy by a constantly ringing cell-phone, but poor Maria was losing out on a whole lot of possible job opportunities. With unemployment being what it is in this country, and the fate of the vast army of substitute teachers being as precarious as it is...I started to feel responsible for this person.

So, I decided to find her, and find her I did! Where? On Facebook, of course! (See what a social network expert I am becoming!) Turns out that while my cell-phone number is something like 1234567891, hers is 1234567892 and somewhere along the line a mistake was made in writing that number down.

Maria was quite thrilled to hear from me, and to hear that she had been called by so many schools. Luckily for her, she is already working somewhere until June. In an email exchange she asked me, "will they call me in September?"

That may have been the last straw...