My opening act

My mother called this weekend and for once, I actually answered the phone. It’s not that I don’t like speaking to my mother, I just don’t like speaking on the phone in general. And she usually calls at the most inopportune times – like when I’m in line at the grocery store or when I’m sitting in my comfy chair and flipping through the television stations because there’s nothing good on and I’m bored. So by the time I actually feel I can stand holding the phone up to my ear for an hour, three weeks have gone by and I have twelve missed phone calls from my mother.

Yes, I’m a terrible person.

Anyway, she called and I actually answered. Okay, she called and my son answered and told her I was out picking up dinner and he talked to her for about an hour, so by the time I “returned” from my errands, she was pretty much over holding the phone up to her ear and our conversation was relatively brief. I only had time to smoke two cigarettes. Don’t start.

I’ve decided this is a good strategy from now on. My son can be my opening act. Except that while most opening acts are meant to get the audience pumped and excited, mine will just wear them down, so by the time I take the stage, they won’t really care about my performance. I’ll still be the headliner, and they can tell people they got to see (speak to) me, but I don’t really have to do much and they’ll still feel like they got their money’s worth.

And before you accuse me of using the kid, let me say that he loves to talk on the phone. And by “talk on the phone,” I mean that he likes to be on the phone, to be a presence on an open line between two people, but he doesn’t really have much to say. A typical conversation with my son consists of asking him one hundred and ninety-two questions, most of which are answered with monosyllabic grunts and sighs. The one hundred and ninety-third question, about what video game he is currently playing, is met with a forty-five minute response in which he explains what level mage he is (I still don’t even know what that means). But mostly he just sits there, breathing into the mouthpiece and refusing to take the hint when you ask him things like, “Well . . . is there anything else you’d like to talk about?” The fact that there never is anything else does not mean he’s ready to hang up. He isn’t. Unless, of course, food has arrived.

Or, you know, fake food.