In which I became a taxi company for a few hours

I didn't want to be a taxi company. Truly. I don't even own a car.

However, this did not stop me from receiving dozens of calls this morning, from about 6:00 am, all of whom wanted me to send them a taxi.

Now, I want to preface my rant with a sub-rant. I used to turn the ringer of my phone off at nights, in order to prevent myself being woken up by unsolicited callers (like my mother, for instance) at ungodly hours of the morning (say, 10:00 am). But now, I have a new-fangled Bezeq digital hands-free flashy silver-looking space-age telephone, with all sorts of whizz-bang features. You might be forgiven for thinking that one of these features is "turn the ringer off". You might be misled into thinking this by the actual existence of such an option on the phone's menu. You would be wrong. On this phone, 'turn the ringer off' actually means 'turn the ringer down a little'. This is a phone that simply doesn't want you to miss a call. I have a feeling that Bezeq has an entire laboratory full of Jewish mothers, designing phones that are guaranteed to wake their sons up at all acceptable kvetching hours.

However, my mother, it should be noted, has gotten the hang of things, and these days never calls me before 10:00 am anyway.

[End of sub-rant. Begin main rant]

So imagine my surprise when I hear the phone ringing this morning at 6:00 am ...

It's in another room (because, as I might have mentioned, I can't shut it up, so it can at least be as far away as possible), and by the time I got to it (and don't forget, I had to go and try and answer - after all, we're in a war here), it had stopped, but when I looked at the number that had called (what a great feature that is), it wasn't one that I recognized.

I shrugged at my dog who had come to have a look as well, turned around, and went back to bed.

As Murphy would have it, no sooner had I fallen asleep than - you guessed it - it started ringing again. I missed it again, but still didn't recognize the number.

Finally, at about 8:00 am, I managed to get to it before it stopped ringing. And on the other end was a very angry woman shouting that she'd been trying to get hold of me for two hours and could I please send her a taxi. A taxi?

I told her that I am many things, but I can't help her with taxis, and that she'd be better off phoning a taxi company for that. She didn't sound convinced. "You don't have any taxis?" She asked me. "Not now, and not ever," I replied. "Not possible," she said. "I called the _____ taxi company". "But you got me," I said, "and I am not, and have no desire to be, a taxi company".

Since she wasn't sure, she tried ringing again. Of course, she got me. I explained to her that I still wasn't a taxi company.

I was about to phone Bezeq and see why they had me listed as a taxi company, when the phone rang - a different number this time - but still, asking me to send them a taxi. Once again, I explained that I was not a taxi company, only to be told by the guy on the other end that that doesn't make sense, because the number that he'd called was the number of the taxi company. But the number he'd called was not my number. This was getting weird. I told him that I'm going to phone Bezeq and find out what's going on. He suggested I do that, indeed.

Then he called again and asked me why I hadn't called Bezeq yet. I told him that I was trying to, and if he'd get off my phone line, I might even manage.

The woman at Bezeq was helpful - in her own special way. She explained to me that most likely, someone at the taxi company had forwarded their phone line to my number, instead of to some other number of their own. The problem was that we weren't sure which number had been forwarded to mine, since the taxi company in question has several numbers, and Ms Bezeq couldn't find which one had been forwarded to me. "Perhaps," she suggested, "you can just wait and see if it resolves itself."

Yes, that's exactly what I should do.

In the meantime, I think I'd better invest in a few taxis. There seems to be a demand ...