WE NEED TO HAVE A TALK ABOUT THE RULES OF PHONE ETTIQUITE...

This has suddenly become and issue. And by suddenly I mean that I'm writing this at 2 AM on a Saturday because I was rudely, and by that I mean RUDELY- ENOUGH- TO- CONVINCE- ME- TO- HAUL- MY- ASS- OUT- OF- BED- TO- ADDRESS- THIS- PROBLEM- WITH- A- BLOG- ENTRY, awakened by a phone call at about 1:30. What total cad committed this horrendous faux pas? Who committed such an egregious error? Yup, you guessed it... Phil.

Just so you are all aware, I'm not going to pawn this off on my mom being here for the weekend, I'd probably be just as pissed if she wasn't here and this happened. But since she is here, this error is just magnified THAT much more.

For those of you who are unaware of the rules which govern phone etiquette, please allow me to enlighten you. (Times vary by person, so I'll just write these rules up using my personally-specified times as a rough guide, please keep in mind that I'm a college student, so these times are more in keeping with my lifestyle than those of, say a housewife, or mother, father, etc.) (All times are central-standard.)

1) Weekday calls should be limited to non-sleeping hours only. This means you don't ever call before 10AM or after midnight unless you KNOW FOR A FACT that I am awake and able to coherently speak to you. Obviously emergency situations are the exception to this rule, but by emergency, you better be calling because someone is dead, hospitalized, or in jail... and since I'm a poor college kid, you better think twice before calling to wake me up for bail money... (Generally if you call me and wake me up for bail, I'll say I'm coming to get you, but I will roll over and go back to sleep, and let your ass rot in jail for the night just to spite you at that point.)

2) Weekend calling generally has a looser timeframe for the later hours, but only if contact is already established and/or expected. This means that the 10AM start time is still firmly in place (although my father regularly violates this rule on many of my hung over Saturdays, but since odds are that we don't share DNA, I will be less forgiving with you) any evening calling should be started no later than 11 PM. By this I don't mean that I don't take calls after 11, I mean that if you have not already established some form of contact by 11PM, (i.e. the first call should have been made by now, thus establishing contact) it should be assumed that I'm way cooler than you, and I'm doing something with other people who are also cooler than you. Basically, no matter what day it is, unless you are actually, physically looking at irrevocable proof I'm awake and wanting to talk to you after 11, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO START CALLING.

3) If you're a friend who I've not spoken to in QUITE a while, and by friend, I mean someone who I have lived with, (in the same apartment/dorm/hall, etc.) someone I dated, or someone who is thoroughly convinced I will take your call at any hour, then by all means call at any hour. If I don't take your call, and/or don't return your call within 48 hours, please rethink your status. (Please note: example violator of this rule, Lauren H. whose calls I don't return for months because of her consistent violations.)

4) You may call during school or work hours, because we all know that I don't always go to class, and I don't do much of anything of any real importance at work. So if you call, and my phone rings at an inopportune moment (like if I forgot to turn my ringer off during lecture) it is solely MY responsibility, not yours. You will not be penalized for calling.

5) If I have left you a message to call me ASAP, and I've not established time stipulations in the message, you can call me back at any time. I return my phone calls promptly, and I expect the same from you, so if I have not specified that I'll be going to bed at a certain time, and you get the message that you need to return my call ASAP, you have permission to call at any time. However, if I say in the message that I'm going to bed at midnight, and you don't get my message until 2 AM, then please wait to return my call until at least 10 AM the following day.

6) Messages (text messages, voicemail messages, answering machine messages, and verbal messages taken by your roommate or your mom) should be answered promptly. Basically, I'd like a call back within roughly 36 hours to at least let me know that you got my message and that you're not ignoring me.

7) If you don't leave me a message, (voicemail, or otherwise) I am not required to call you back. Basically I'll see you called, but if you don't leave a message I will assume that it was not important enough to warrant a call back. Even if you didn't mean to call me, leave a message telling me that you didn't mean to call, so that I don't waste my minutes calling you back to find out what the hell you wanted.

8) Special occasions, like holidays, birthdays, long weekends, etc. allow for a certain amount of flexibility in the rules. So the rules will be flexed at my discretion.

9) Certain people, [and they know who they are without a doubt, and without exception, (basically my mom, Alana, Beth, Ciara, Dave, Jen, Kirsten, Kim, Scoot, Tarreck, and maybe one or two other people)] are allowed to call at any hour for any reason. I will take their call because I love them more than I love you. Sorry that's just the way it is. If you have a problem with this, it's probably because you're an ass, which is probably why your name is absent from the short list anyway.

10) Drunk-dials supercede ALL rules. Drunk-dials/drunk-text-messaging, etc. are acceptable from any person at any hour. As a lush, I must completely submit to all possibility of receiving a phone call at 4:27AM telling me that you were thinking that "Being a pirate must have been cool, even if they didn't have pancakes out on the boat... Pancakes are really good you know! Here, talk to my friend while I go over there and get some pancakes... ARRRG!" I find that the pure comedy of these phone calls and messages far outweighs any lost sleep or penalizable feelings of resentment, so by all means, CALL AWAY ON ANY DAY AT ANY TIME!

So as you can plainly see, since Phil wasn't drunk when he called, he was in clear violation of rule number 2. And since he's returning the message that I left him on Wednesday, he's also in violation of rule 6 as well. This is a problem. If he'd called back within the established 36 hour time frame, he'd have known that my mom was coming, so odds are he wouldn't have committed the fatal error of breaking rule 2 and waking me up in the process. I think I might have to castrate him, because he not only woke me up, he woke up MY MOM!

It's not as if we haven't had our problems anyway... but now he's SO done.

Dave on the other hand, sent 2 drunken text messages in the same time frame, and I love him.