A Blessed Workaround

Since getting my iPhone last summer and abandoning the despised 323-prefaced digits foisted upon me by Verizon for a rightful and coveted old-school 213 number available through AT&T, I’ve had the occasional fun of getting wrong number calls at really crappy hours. From the same person. Like yesterday at 5:37 a.m., or again this morning at 4:29. The incoming number originates in the 606 area code, which I learned is somewhere in eastern Kentucky.

I will refrain as best I can from casting regional stereotypical dispersions and judgments about who this buttbisquit of an inbred backwoods bluegrass chewing banjo plucker might be. Starting now.

No, it’s not a telemarketer. It’s not some spammer. It’s just this lady who can’t punch her phone’s keypad for shit and chronically misdials my number. Or area code. Or both. Who’s to say? And I mean c-h-r-o-n-i-c-a-l-l-y. As of this morning I’ve enjoyed one shy of a score of calls from her — and all of them at the aforementioned hours and most of them on the weekends, when it might be perfectly daylight and normal in her end of the country, but so not over here on my end.

The first time she called I answered the phone with a proper if bleary and hoarse “Hello?” but she hung up without so much as a sorry and then about a minute later called back, to which I answered with “Do you have any goddam idea what the fuck time it is?”

Hung up again she did.

So back I called her.

“Hello?”

“I asked you if you knew what the fu –?”

Click.

Between that auspicious meeting and up until yesterday my iPhone has logged an additional 16 calls from this person who I’ve unaffectionately dubbed a variation of Kentucky in which I replace the “t” with an “f.” Most of her  dream interruptors have gone blessedly unheard and into voicemail, but some of them have raised me out of a dead sleep whereupon I’d hiss out some rhetorical question along the lines of “Could you be any more stupid?” before she’d hang up.

In fairness there haven’t been any calls from her for awhile. Then came yesterday’s No. 18 and today’s No. 19, back-to-back bullshit that dashed my hopes she had been concerting extra effort and attention. Or at least given up drunk dialing.

This morning I immediately called her back but instead of berating her I just listened as she asked “Hello?” a half-dozen times — each one a little more insistent — while I just listened trying to decipher who this queen of the imbeciles might be.

No clue.

So instead throughout the remainder of the night’s march to the  morning I aimed to work the solution instead of the problem. I googled “How the hell do I block some Kentucky idiot from calling me on my iPhone?”

Apparently I’m not alone in this inquiry and there are two solutions. One is to $ubscribe to $ome $ervice with my provider that allows me to block a $et amount of number$ for a fee which rhymes with AT&T, but I’ll be damned if this nuisance is gonna cost me cash.

The second option isn’t perfect, but it’ll do and involved me downloading a free “silent” ringtone, loading it onto my phone and then connecting the 606 number to it. Of course, I also had to turn off the phone’s vibration function as well as the new voicemail alert, but  the next time she calls — and there will be a next time — I won’t hear a thing.