I’m not sure if my dad is messing with me or not.
It is probably safest to assume that he is.
“So I woke up, what? 2:00, 2:30 in the morning, and I hear a voice I don’t recognize coming from the kitchen.”
I take a drink of my beer, keep a wary eye on his face.
“And I’m thinking to myself, holy cow! There’s someone in the house! What do I do? Should I wake your mother? Where’s that baseball bat? Do I have time to go to the bathroom first?”
I snort appreciatively. My father taps the side of his nose, nods.
“So I go into the kitchen,” he continues, raising his eyebrows significantly, “and there’s Mumma’s phone on the table. It’s all lit up, and as I reach for it, the phone says to me, Please say a command.
“Well, I damn-near fell over. Please say a command, the lousy thing says.” He shakes his head in disbelief, takes a sip of beer. ”Pfft.”
“So what’d you do?”
“What could I do?” he says. “It wants a command, I’ll give it a command! I tell it: Shut up!”
I laugh. “Your command is shut up?”
He nods, takes another drink. “But does that satisfy it? No. Please say a command, it says again! Another command from the phone! So I tell it OK, shut up and drop dead.”
I can’t help myself. I laugh again. “Did that work?”
“Nah,” he says, rising with his empty beer can, “but I was done with it. A phone that wakes me up, makes demands?”
“So what’d you do?”
He shrugs, drops the can in the recycling, pulls another beer from the fridge. “What could I do?” He pops open the can, takes a drink. “I stuffed it into the kitchen towel drawer. I figured your mother could have a talk with it in the morning.”