I have a question for my phone geek friends. My current workhorse phone is a well-loved and well-worn Nokia 6800.

Hi. Is your phone number (678) 521-2061? Are you the non-English-speaker who called our house incessantly until midnight last night?

When I say incessantly, I mean it. There were spurts of time in which whoever owned this number would call us literally every fifteen seconds. Jeff answered the first time it rang, and hung up after not being able to make himself understood…

We have Caller ID, and it has been one of the best services we've ever purchased, despite my sometimes missing the element of surprise when I pick up the phone. Once, there was a time when the phone would ring, and I would answer tentatively, expecting telemarketers or wrong numbers, only to be thoroughly gratified to hear an old friend's voice on the phone.