Friday, August 01, 2008

Faraway voices

This morning I had occasion to phone home from work. After five rings, I was just waiting for the answering machine to kick in, when ...

[muffled rustlings, which anyone who's ever known a small child to pick up a phone will recognise]

Hello, Elizabeth?

Hello.

Hello Elizabeth, this is Daddy. You're a clever girl. Is Mummy in the shower?

Yes.


What are you doing?

Mummy gived me a snack.

A snack? What kind of snack?

[muffled, ... possibly "pear" ...], white chocolate buttons.

... more of the same ...

Will you tell Mummy I phoned?

Yes.


Thank you. Bye bye.

Bye.

At this point, I hung up. With hindsight, that was rather a silly thing to do - I should have waited to hear if she hung up first.

Apparently she subsequently told Mummy she had been talking to Daddy. Mummy assumed she was talking about earlier today, or yesterday; the idea that it might have been on the phone didn't occur to her. After all, it's difficult to get Elizabeth to talk on the phone; the idea that she could answer it herself simply didn't occur to Mummy. And since she had, in fact, hung up properly, there was no evidence that she'd been on the phone.