Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink.
Pause. Tink. Tink. Tink.
Tink. Pause. Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink.
And the search was on.
Smokey the cat and I both were on the prowl looking for the
source of that annoying “Tink.”
When it stopped, we stopped the hunt, too.
Some minutes later it began again. Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink. Pause. Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink. Pause. Tink. Tink. Tink. Tink. Pause.
My sainted wife was at a neighbor’s house throughout this
exploration, but soon returned.
I was anxious to explain the new mysterious noise from
who-knows-where to her.
“Did my phone ring while I was gone?” was her question.
Smokey and I looked at each other and realized what the
Tinks were.
She immediately added she just changed her phone ring
tone. Indeed she did.
My ring tone is an old, standard wall phone ring that can
nearly wake the dead, and often does.
My sainted wife insisted she wanted her phone alert
distinctly different so as to be able to distinguish, so she desperately tried
– and succeeded – in finding the most annoying ring tone on the planet. I thought.
I was patiently waiting as a patient in the doctor’s office
when I heard the Mother of all annoying ring tones in the form of Holst’s The
Seasons / Spring booming from a fellow patient’s purse.
Sure, it was ear-catching, but only cute once. After this relic cut the caller off once, the
caller redialed and the concert began anew.
Then her daughter called. Next
was her sister. Each time we all heard
the same six-bars of Holst’s classical tune.
It was no longer cute.
In fact, the other patients were quickly losing their
patience and secretly plotting as to how we could make her untimely demise
appear to be an accident. But I digress.
Back home, while searching through instructions on how to
install custom ring tones onto my iPhone, I discovered I could actually create
my own! If not commercially available, I
could, for instance, record a sneeze and make that sound effect my ring tone.
I pensively considered how much fun I could extract from
having my phone ring, thereby producing a sneeze sound, at which time I would
follow up by wiping my nose on my arm, and smiling at each nosy voyeur.
Then it came to me.
In the same vein as the brilliant sneeze gag, I located a sound effect
of flatulence. For all New Jerseyite
readers, that would be a fart; in Massachusetts
It is a classic that gets plenty of mileage from me
especially in grocery stores. With my
phone in my back pocket, any incoming phone call emits that special ring tone sans the odor. All the while, I give the person behind my in
line the evil eye while they attempt to avoid any blame.
But at home, my wife yells “Change that!” after each
incoming call. And Smokey and I give one
another brief smile and nod.
