I don't get that many calls on my cell phone. Generally it's a member of my family calling to find out where I am or whether I can pick something/someone up on my way to/from somewhere. So I didn't even think about the fact that I didn't get any calls for a few days, until I went to pick up the Pirate yesterday.

The Pirate's been on a jury all week, listening to the sob story and pitiably weak defense of a couple of no-account, white-trash, hang-'em-high-and-let-me-poke-their-dead-bodies-with-sticks career criminals (I'm blatantly making this part up. The Pirate, being the thoughtful juror that he is, hasn't said anything to me apart from mocking the looks of the defense attorney, which isn't privileged information anyway). I went to pick him up and was trying to call his cell phone to find out where he'd be waiting, but first his cell phone was off, then it was busy. Clearly he had only just turned it on and was trying to call me.

As I pulled up, he had an odd look on his face. He snapped his phone shut and told me that he was just trying to call me, but a man answered. Well, what could I do? I looked around the truck. I had the earbud in my ear, the actual handset in my lap, and my truck is just not that large. If there were a man anywhere in it, especially close enough to answer my phone while it's screwed into my head, I'm pretty sure I'd know.

First he checked the number he had dialed. Yup, it was the number I've been giving out. Was I wrong? We looked at the "My Phone No." screen, and yes, it was the correct phone number. The Pirate dialed it again. The same man answered.

I just thought about this a few minutes ago and tried to call my cell phone from my land line. I got the same hapless dolt. Or evil, skeevy number jumper. I haven't decided yet.

I called Working Assets today and told them "someone has my phone number." At first the woman thought that I meant that someone was calling me when I didn't want them to. It took some explaining to get her to understand that my calls are going to someone else entirely. She asked me if I had forwarded my calls. I didn't think so, but just for shits and giggles, we went through the exercise of switching off call forwarding (the screen on this one is bad - you can't tell what state the phone is in). She called again and got the same guy who is, by now, pretty irritated at me.

She came back and said "I'm sorry. This is impossible." She did not say "that is very unusual," or "unlikely." It's impossible.

They may end up changing my phone number before this is all over and done with. I'm very sad about this. And annoyed. And perturbed. It's impossible.