Sympathy for the caller

Last season, each episode of my podcast began with a telephone call to my friend Jackie. I’d call her up with some dumb question, she’d get angry, she’d laugh, then the episode would begin. Listeners loved it, but Jackie hated it. And this season, she’s refusing to participate.

Jackie and I have known each other since junior high where Jackie was the meanest, most popular girl in school. In grade 7, my best friend Robert asked her out. I’ll never forget the exhilarated look on his face as he ran to our locker bank to tell me that while Jackie had turned him down, she did say that they could be “hi, bye” friends. Robert loosened his necktie like a middle-aged ad exec who’d just closed an important account.

This is all to say that selling Jackie on something she doesn’t want to do isn’t easy. But knowing this doesn’t stop me from trying to change her mind.

Monday “I’m updating my iPhone contacts and wanted to make sure I have all of your vital information. What’s Jackie short for?” “Jackie is short for Jackie.” “Not Jackeline?” “You know it isn’t.” “Jackerondax?” Jackie hangs up the phone.

Tuesday. “I can’t get my toe ring off my ring toe,” I say. Jackie’s a doctor and knows about such things.

“There’s no such thing as a ring toe,” she says.

“Sure there is,” I say. “Right beside the toe that ate roast beef. Jackie hangs up the phone.

Wednesday “Hello.” “I’m too lazy to get up and look for my TV Guide. Can you tell me what’s on tonight?”

“I give up,” she says. “How many of these do we need to record?”

There was one time that I came to school even though I had the flu. I had to throw up, but kept myself from doing so only because I knew how much it would disgust Jackie. Finally, I asked to be excused from the classroom and in the hallway I began to vomit. I wasn’t the kind of kid who vomited much, and the experience felt very personal. A teacher in the room beside the bathroom came out and walked me back to class.

Jackie, who sat beside the door, let me in. Seeing me, she gave me this look, not the withering look I’d grown accustomed to, but another look, a look of profound pity. And here it was again, coming through the phone line. “Seriously, though” I say, “What time is The Simpsons on?”

And click goes the phone.