Thursday, May 13, 2010

Rube Goldberg's Psychic Machine

I got my wife good a few weeks ago. It's too bad it wasn't on April 1, though, or that would have been just too perfect.

But I got her good.

She was down in Sacramento, visiting a friend, and she called me on her cell phone just as she was getting to her friend's place. But she didn't know she called me. As often happens, her phone bounces around in her purse - and she never locks the keypad, despite my insistence - so, occasionally, I get a muffled phone call from her, from the inside of her purse.

I could hear her talking with her friend, but could not make out any actual words, and I tried my best to make a noise loud enough for her to hear me, but to no avail. Then the acoustics changed, as if she walked into a corridor or a hallway, and I could make out a few words in her conversation. All I heard was her friend say that there was this Rube Goldberg machine that she should see.

I decided to hang up and call her back, to tell her that her phone had dialed me up...again...but when I called back, there was no answer, and I hung up without leaving a voice message. Then I thought I should call back and leave a voice message so she would know that she had inadvertently called me again.

Then it hit me. I realized she had no idea that she had called me, and I was about 99% certain that she had never heard of a Rube Goldberg machine before, so as her phone was ringing, the nature of the voice message I was about to leave was taking on a very different form.

When the device beeped, my unrehearsed message was totally spontaneous and in the moment, so came off very genuine. I said, "hey! It's me. I just had a major breakthrough in psychic phenomena and I'm doing an experiment and I wanted to check with you. I know this can't possibly be right, but are you by any chance looking at a Rube Goldberg machine right now? Call me back. Bye."

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. When she finally got her message, some minutes later, she was actually watching this Rube Goldberg machine on a YouTube video with her friend. She had never even heard of Rube Goldberg, so imagine her utter and total shock when she got my message!

She called me back and was so excited that she put me on speakerphone so she and her friend could hear all about my breakthrough in psychic phenomena. In a moment of anti-climactic disappointment after disclosing my secret, however, the discussion suddenly turned into her wanting me dead.

Although I can never raise the subject with her again, it was so worth it. Whenever I need a good laugh, I can just think about Rube Goldberg.