Dial "M" for Murder

If you dial a telephone number and reach a party other than the one you wanted to contact, how many times do you continue to call that number to speak to the person you intended?

I would hope the answer would be, "Not more than once."

This morning I received a phone call from an unknown person speaking in an unknown tongue in a voice more suited for hawking goods in a Bombay market than whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

"You have the wrong number," I advised several times before hanging up.

They called back.

As soon as I said, "Hello," they hung up.

This went on several more times until I opted to leave the phone off the hook.

Once the receiver was back in the cradle it was only a few minutes later that the phone rang again and my answering machine picked up. The message on my machine is clearly in English and yet the disembodied voice (now that of a man) left a message in this unidentifiable tongue. His manner was clearly that of someone who knew that the person he wanted to speak to was pulling an enormous practical joke by masquerading as an American. Not only answering the phone in English, but having an English message on their answering machine! What chutzpah!

At what point will these people acknowledge that they have, in fact, dialed a phone number that does not belong to the person they so rabidly need to speak to? Will they just keep dialing until I become their buddy?

Is this the tenacity that made this country great? Was this the spunk that kept immigrants alive in their new world?