Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
Making sure you got your phone calls was a complicated affair in the days before cell phones and answer machines. Especially for a teenager. This is just one of the problems I encountered – after coming home from a long, fun night practicing with the marching band:
Mumzie: Graham called while you were out
Wendy: Graham! Which Graham? What did he say?
Darn, now mum knows there are several Grahams in my life and he might have told her something personal.
Mumzie: there’s more than one Graham? He didn’t say what it was about dear, just said to let you know he’d called
Double darn
Clearly this is a discreat Graham. Can’t pick one out from the rest based on that description. So now I have to work out in which order to phone them back. Then how to start the conversation without giving away that I don’t know if I’m returning a call, or calling them for the first time? Then I have to work out how to advise mumzie on taking future calls from Grahams, to help her work out which one called without saying “which Graham are you?” which would make each of them feel insignificant, and they’re not. They’re all special in different ways
Life’s so complicated!

July 11th, 2011
I had a suplus of Stuarts.
Sx
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July 12th, 2011
My teenage girlfriends all had very different names so I didn’t have that problem. But I had the other problem that my mum would have misheard Sue as Prue or Jane as Elaine. I had to deduce who it really was.
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