Those Crazy Romanians

An odd thing happened at our house last Tuesday. It started for me around two in the afternoon. I was working (kind of) when I received a call from Sarah. She was kind of freaked out and was telling me about some calls that she was getting. She told me that twice already that day, starting around noon and again at two, she received about four or five back to back calls from some man on the phone. Each call would show up differently on our caller ID, but mostly as Unknown Name and Number. She couldn’t understand what this man was saying and she said she heard another woman’s voice in the background. It seemed to her like a telemarketing office, but she wasn’t sure. She asked me what she should do. Being the good husband I am I told her she was overreacting and that if she was worried she should call the telephone company. Being the good wife she listened to what I said and called the phone company. A little while later I received another call from Sarah, saying she received more calls. She also said she contacted the phone company. They were of course extremely helpful and told her to fill out the do not call registry again, and said for $4.50 a call they could trace the calls and build a file for prosecution. I sure am glad this company boasts about their excellent customer service (off topic). We decided to wait it out and see if it continued….it did. I got home around 6 that night and just before dinner we started to get the calls again. This time I answered the phone. “Hello….Hello” no answer “Who is this?” then a reply in terrible English “Hello”. This game was repeated for a little while, and then the caller hung up. This continued for the next two of the five total calls. On the fourth and fifth call I broke out my linguistic skill on the caller. “No solicito” “Wrongo Numero”. The calls then stopped for about an hour and started up again. After the first call, I went right to Bablefish and got a few translations to try out on them. I got “Wrong Number do not call” translated in Spanish, French, German and Italian. The next four calls I busted out the Babletalk on them, and hoped they would understand. This didn’t stop it, so I used Bablefish again to threaten the caller. Did you know that Police has the same base in about every language…..call police, policia, etc… At this point I was pretty annoyed and called the phone company myself. I actually did get someone who was helpful and he took a couple of numbers I did have on caller ID and traced to country code to....Romania. Unfortunately I didn’t get the Romanian translation on the web. Later that evening, the calls came again, but this time a woman responded. Had better English than the male, but not enough to have a conversation with. Through our “conversing” she asked for her brother, or called me her brother, I’m still unsure. I told her that I am not her brother, that I don’t have a brother (kind of a lie, sorry Wes, Josh, Dan, Micah and Nate), and to stop calling or I will call policia. This was around 9 that night. I am happy to report that the Romanians are leaving us alone for now and we haven’t had any other incidents. I didn’t realize I would be so offended, or that I could be so harassed by a stalker. Not that it was ever real high on my list, but I don’t ever want to visit Romania.