Near Miss

They were making moose calls. It was a simple enough question to answer, but it was just this side of six thirty in the morning. The fact that I could pull it together enough to dial the phone and get through to the disembodied voices from the radio was its own triumph. When they answered my call, they asked the question again: "What were those kids doing?" I knew the answer because I had read about the moose-calling contest in Anchorage the day before on Al Gore's Internet: "They were making moose calls," I replied in my best-early-morning-baritone.
Then there was some hoopla on the other end of the line, and after a few moments, a dial tone. I had been cut off. A wave of panic, then frustration, followed by a desperate search for the redial button on my phone. Would they try to call me back? Surely they had caller ID at their state-of-the-art studio and were hastily going about trying to reconnect with me. In the background, I listened with one ear as the my phone continued to ring in the other. As long as I wasn't being shut out by that horrible, incessant busy signal, I was still in the game.
Then the song was over, and a voice other than my own came on the radio, "I think they were making moose calls?" This woman was tentative and mild. She had obviously been coached, but the DJ and the rest of the morning crew celebrated her as if she had discovered a cure for the Mondays. She got my prize: a request for anything in the music library. She asked for "some Pink Floyd," not even a specific tune. I would have asked for "Us and Them," or "Set Your Controls For The Heart Of The Sun," but the droids at the radio station probably just set about playing "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)." I don't know. I didn't stick around to find out. It was time for a shower, then breakfast, and off to school for another day of excitement, vague disappointment and barely perceived injustice.