The phone rang again, I picked it up again and said my name, no sound, then beep-beep-beep. That did it. I got so fed up with it that it was time for a plan. My own little, 10-years old’s, revenge plan.
My father was having an affair, that much was clear. For months already, our family was disturbed and disfunctional. The relationship between my parents was totally messed up and as their youngest son, I felt heart broken and angry.
Twice a day, for weeks, the phone would ring and there would be no sound if I picked it up. It annoyed me big time. It never happened to my father though. So I concluded it must be her, the unknown woman.
I decided to start some retaliation. Every now and then I heard him calling her in his home office (on a landline). One day I overheard him through the office door, and I waited out the call. He went to have lunch in the kitchen afterwards, and I sneaked into his office. I pressed the redial button.
With my heart pounding in my throat I waited… And then she picked up and said her name. Gotcha! I stayed silent, wrote her name on a paper and hung up. As a little Sherlock Holmes I started looking her up in the phone book. I had some clues to what town she might live, so after some researching, I found her name and number.
Since that moment, the fight was on. A few times a day I would call her and say nothing at all until she would hang up. It felt great. My little sneaky, well thought out, revenge plan was working just as planned. It must have driven her crazy.
It took them weeks to find out. Then my father came to me, sighed, collected some courage and asked me bluntly if I was the one that was ghost calling his ‘friend’. I denied. But from that day on, I stopped. My point was made.
EDIT: we are talking 1988 here, so no chat apps or cell phones…
EDIT 2: My mother just told me that my father accused her at the time of the ghost calls. Oops!