As a kid, playing telephone was big fun. The first person in line whispered something silly, like banana, into the ear of the next person, who then whispered what she heard, and so on, until the last person in line said the word out loud. Somehow banana had transformed into Bad-Ass Anna. Maybe I'm remembering that wrong. Anyway, aside from the inherent hilarity, the point of the game, at least in my mind, was that people are terrible listeners and should pay more attention, or things can spin out of control faster than a rogue dreidel.
Take yesterday, for instance. Hubby's brother called the parents to check in, then called hubby: "Mom's taking Dad to the hospital." Then hubby called me. "My dad's in the hospital." "Why?" "His back." "Have you talked to your mom?" "I can't get her on the phone." Whereupon my reporter skills, mostly dormant since the '80s, rebooted. "Call the emergency room." "Why?" "It's the only way to find out what's going on." "Let's wait. I'm sure she'll call at some point." Hours went by with no updates. I filled in the blanks with worry and reckless Googling. Finally, I reached my mother-in-law at home: "What's going on?" "We just got back from the doctor." "The doctor? Not the hospital?" "Just the doctor." "Oh, thank God, we were so worried." "Sorry." "It's not your fault. There was some... confusion on our end. How is he?" "His back hurts. He'll have an x-ray next week." In terms of updates, not too terrible. We'll take doctor visit over hospital, any day of the week.
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