Plebian and the Mysterious Missing Classmate

I received the strangest call the other day. It was round about 7, and I was drying my daughter's hair, when the phone rang. Like a good homeowner, I answered it, and for my troubles I was met by static.

After a few moments, I was able to discern just a few things:

*The person on the other line knew me (they did, after all, refer to me by name).

*They were calling from the International Space Station, evidently deep within the Van Allen belt, because all I could hear was massive static.

So I instructed them to wait and call me back in a few minutes, to see if that would alleviate the problem. They did indeed call back a few minuets later, and I was able to figure out a few more things:

*They had gone to high school with me (they did, I think, refer to the proper high school)

*Their name was either Tom Simpson, Pete Krugerand, or Funky Winkerbean, I'm not sure which, and I couldn't understand through the scratching when I asked him to spell it out for me what the name should be.

At this point, and despite my protestations, Funky insisted on asking "So…SCRATCH-HISS-SCRATCH…do you…SCRATCH…ember…HISS…me?...SCRATCH"

"No, but I might if I knew who you were!" I insisted. The first two I'd never heard of, and I never cared for Funky Winkerbean anyways. Stupid band geek.

"Oh," the dude sounded really disappointed. "Oh, I see...SCRATCH! HISS!"

"HEY!" I yelled. "I'd probably know who you were if I could understand you! You've gotta call me back on a different line so I can understand you!"

And at this point, the line went dead.

Great. Just great. This is going to bother me for the rest of my life, you know?

And I can just see the headlines now:

"Beloved local businessman Funky Winkerbean committed suicide this evening, leaving a note behind saying that he's tired of going unnoticed in this faceless society. Funky was despondent because his dearest childhood friend forgot all about him and hung up on him earlier in the evening."

The funny thing is, Wifey has gone certifiably around the bend over this. Listen, it's no real hair off my ass if I reconnect with Funky one way or the other. Sure, it'd be nice to know who it was that called me, but he probably was just trying to trap me into buying him dinner so he could have me drugged and extract my liver to sell it to an organ trafficking ring.

Because that happens to me all the time.

But for Wifey this has become a quest. She's hunted down all the people we still keep in touch with from high school and asked both of them if they'd handed our number out. Which they hotly deny, but I swear one of them has beady eyes and I never trusted her anyways and she probably put us up on the bathroom wall under the line "for a good time call…"

So, on the off chance that one of my 40 readers is either my old friend Pete Simpson or Tom Krugerand, please be sure to call me back, because I'd really like to talk to you and catch up about old times, and I'm sure I'll fake remembering you better once we get off of a terribly staticy line.

If it's Funky, though, well; lose my number. And don't bother asking why, you know the answer!