The Reason Why My Parents Should Not Be Allowed To Leave the Country
And I say this with love…
My parents left Thursday for a Mediterranean cruise. My mother sent me an itinerary by email that I assumed (mistake #1) would have all pertinent information. This morning, I started looking it over to determine when they were returning so I could pick them up from the airport. It isn’t clear…could be Saturday, could be Sunday…so I use the cell phone number (international) that they got for the trip.
It doesn’t work.
I try again.
Do-do-do…We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number…blah, blah, blah.
I figure I’ll call my brother later and try and see what I have wrong and forget about it.
1:32pm. (Keep in mind that I leave my house at 1:30pm to pick my daughter up from school, but I am running late.) Phone rings. I stop to check the caller ID, figuring I can call whoever it is back from my cell phone on my way to school. No number. Hmm…elections are over, let me see who this is.
Hello?
No answer.
Hello?
No answer.
I’m about to hang up…there’s a pop.
Then my mother’s voice, “Julie?”
“Ma? I tried to call–”
“Call me back. This is costing me a fortune.”
“No, Ma, wait. I can’t call you back. I’ve been calling you all morning and the number is–”
“We’re having trouble…call me back.”
“Trouble with the phone? Ma, I can’t call you back.”
“Call me! This is expensive.”
I know this is a conversation heading for disaster. I mean, I know I can’t call her back, but she won’t listen.
“Ma, when are you coming in? Saturday or Sunday?”
“Sunday. Call me.”
She hangs up.
So I try to call. It’s now 1:37pm. I’m running later and later.
The call doesn’t go through.
Duh.
I grab the itinerary and go by the door, waiting to see if she’ll call me back since I can’t call her. I wait. 1:40pm. I have to go. I’ve made a solemn vow to NEVER pick my daughter up late from school, for reasons that are directly related to my beloved mother’s less-than-stellar punctuality rating from when I was a child.
I go. I take my cell phone. I call my brother.
Now keep in mind that my parents and my brothers all work together all day, every day, in a family-owned business. This means that my brothers, all three of them, have not only access to my parents for about eight hours a day, five days a week, but they also have a financial stake in the company that you’d THINK would make them want to, I don’t know, keep in touch with each other.
I start with the older brother, because the two youngest (as much as I love them) are normally clueless about stuff. I’m not even sure they realize my parents are out of the country. Here’s my conversation with my brother:
“Hey, have you heard from Mom and Dad?”
“No, have you?”
I tell him about the conversation with my mother.
“Has anyone from the office heard from them?”
He checks. “No.”
“The number they left us doesn’t work.”
“I’ll try from here. I’ll call you back.”
To his credit, he does both these things. He said he couldn’t get through with the number until he dialed 011, which apparently is the code to call out of the US, a fact I had no way of knowing since I’ve never called out of the US. (Not true, I did once call a hotel in Paris to ask a research question for my book, UP TO NO GOOD, but apparently, they had an 800 number.) Anyway, he said he left a message.
This sounds fishy to me. I try calling with my cell phone using the 011 code and learn that my phone isn’t authorized to make International calls. It must wait until I get home. In the meantime, I call my aunt, who is my mother’s sister. I figure if they are having some kind of trouble, they would have called the office, right? But let’s say the complicated phone system there was keeping out International calls…they’d call my aunt next. She’s home a lot. Makes sense.
She hasn’t heard anything. I tell her I’ll call her back.
I collect my child and head home. I have a voicemail. Now keep in mind that I have VOICEMAIL and not an answering machine. I haven’t had an answering machine for three years, a fact my mother knows.
It’s a voicemail (time stamped 1:43pm) from her that says:
“Julie? Julie? Pick up!”
Well, even if I was home, I wouldn’t have heard this. I have VOICEMAIL.
No other message. No “the ship is sinking and we want to tell you all we love you.” No “we’re having a great time and wanted to see how you were doing.” No nothing.
I try the number again, this time with the 011 code. Now the signal is busy. I try again. Busy. I get suspicious and call the operator, who tells me that to get the International operator, you have to dial 00.
I try this three times before it works. I read the number to the operator.
“What country are they in?”
“They’re on a cruise all over the mediterranean. They started in Greece.”
“What’s the country code?”
“What?”
“The first two or three numbers.”
“423″
“That’s Lichtenstein.”
“They’re not anywhere near Lichtenstein.” (I’m guessing all this…I’m assuming that Lichtenstein isn’t anywhere near, relatively speaking, Greece.)
“The number is wrong. And it’s short a number, too. They gave you the wrong number.”
Nice.
I call my brother, who is now getting annoyed because he’s trying to run a multi-million dollar business while his crazy sister annoys the crap out of him. No one has heard anything. I order him (because I’m his sister and I can do that because he loves me) to alert all the secretaries that if my parents call, they are to tell them I tried to call them back and couldn’t. He assures me this has already been done.
I get off the phone. And I stew. I pour over the itinerary to try and find out more information and there is nothing.
I try to be sly. I call my dad’s secretary to find out the name of the tour company they are traveling with. Surely the Chairman of the Board would leave this information with his secretary, right?
She doesn’t know. She transfers me to my mother’s assistant. He, without answering (because he doesn’t know the answer) transfers me to my brother.
“I wasn’t calling you! I was calling Abe!”
“Abe didn’t know. I don’t know. Why are you worried?”
“I’m not worried. If they’re in trouble, they’re in Italy. They pretty much speak the language and we’re not at war with them. But I’m wondering why you let our parents, who pretty much run the company, out of the country without finding out what travel agent they used.”
“Don’t call me back unless you’re cooking dinner.”
“I am cooking dinner. Lasagna. You’re NOT invited.”
End of call.
But alas, not the end of the story. Because, you see, I’m more tenacious than that. The one piece of information I have is the name of the hotel they stayed at the first night they arrived in Athens. Armed with the knowledge of 011 and with Google, I get the phone number to the hotel. I call. I explain (briefly) that I would like the name of the travel agent that booked my parents into the hotel. The nice Greek lady transfers me to the reservations desk. The nice man there helps me (though why he can’t spell Leto when it’s a Greek name is a little disconcerting) and gives me the name and phone number of the travel agent.
Then he says, “You realize it’s 10pm here. You’ll have to call in the morning.”
I have, of course, no idea that it’s 10pm because I wasn’t thinking that far. But now I have the number to the travel agent and this morning, I will call and try and track down what is wrong with the cell phone that this travel agent sold my parents as part of their travel package.
And I hope they’ll call back. Because Lord knows they wouldn’t have the sense to use the ship’s Internet service (you know they have it!) to check my blog and leave me a message that they are okay. I can’t imagine that if anything were seriously wrong, my mother wouldn’t have been concerned with the cost of the call and she would have left a message. Right?
Parents. You can’t take your eyes off them for a minute. Guess next time they go on a mediterranean cruise, I’ll have to go with them.
UPDATE: As I was taking my daughter to school this morning, I checked my messages. This is what I get from my Dad:
“Hey, darling. It’s Dad. We tried to get in touch with you yesterday and couldn’t get through. Look, we need you to–”
(Insert my mother telling my father to get off the phone)
“I’ve got to go.”
End of call.
I’m going to kill her. I can say that now that I know both of them are alive.
Update #2
They are found! They are fine. The phone was the problem. But now I can stop worrying!
Ain’t that the truth! My parents don’t travel, thank the Lord, or I’d be in a mental ward. They are high maintenance enough without leaving the country, which equals much drama. But hey, if they decided to go on a world cruise, I might be “forced” to go with them. They are, after all, my parents *g*
Comment by Stacy ~ — November 15, 2006 @ 7:35 am
My parents don’t travel but if they did my mother would have everything planned to the last minute and would make sure that everyone had contact numbers (in case something happens on our end) and she would call me everyday to make sure that we are all still alive
(even though I have been married for 8 years). She is so cute :wallbash:
Comment by Kris — November 15, 2006 @ 9:05 am
I’m sure there’s nothing wrong because she would have blurted it out first thing? Right? At least on the second call.
My husband works with his family also and the communication between his family is so unbelievably poor. We even live on the same farm as my in-laws (1/4 mile apart) and I never know what’s going on. I called my mother-in-law one day to tell her my nephew was at our house and she didn’t need to pick him up. She called me back from Atlanta laughing (we’re 8 hours from Atlanta)
. “Oh, when did you go to Atlanta? Didn’t I just see you last night?”
I think when they work together like that, they assume information gets shared with “someone” and they are just so glad to be away from each other they don’t think about discussing any details.
Hang in there and maybe she will read this blog. I’m hoping for you that that’s the case!
Comment by Jodie — November 15, 2006 @ 9:33 am
OMG!! What a phone call that was. And now you know that when they do plan another trip you need to sit and make copies of all the info. Or at the very least have them be sure to leave the info with their assitants.
I get anxious when anyone in my family travels. If their phones aren’t going to work they are required to call and check in no matter what time it is and let me know they made it safely. One of my sisters travels for business and I know she gets annoyed with me, but I am a worrier. She always gives me the hotel info, phone number and if at all possible carries her cell with her. So I know how you are feeling right now. Good luck with your phone call this morning. Hopefully your mom will call again and let you know everything is okay.
Comment by Kelly — November 15, 2006 @ 9:34 am
Too funny! I, too, have voicemail and whenever my mother calls (from next door since she lives in our mother-in-law suite), she does the same thing. “Kim? Kim, pick up. Kim? Kim?” This always goes on for a good minute before she hangs up. She then walks over because she knows I’m home. I tell her I have voicemail, not an answering machine. She says okay. The next day, she calls again. “Kim? Kim, pick up. Kim? Kim?” etc. Mothers. Sheesh.
Comment by Kimberly Raye — November 15, 2006 @ 9:53 am
Julie,
I totally understand! My mom leaves tomorrow morning to New York for the weekend. It’s New York not a different country, but her trip last year was a disaster. My mom (who by the way grew up and lived in Ny city for years!!!!) was picked pocketed last year. Her cash and credit card, cell phone were all taken. Thank God my sister was with her. While I was here helpless (Tampa) :wallbash:.
So am I nervous for her trip, one word - YES!!!! I haven’t sleep, and I keep thinking of thing that can go wrong this trip!
P.s Julie, Thanks for pass my info on to Roxanne!!!!!!
Comment by TRICIA — November 15, 2006 @ 10:19 am
Oh my.:wallbash: My parents are going to London between Christmas and New Year’s and then on a Cruise to Alaska in May. I may end up in a funny farm. I can see them doing what your parents did. Hang in there
Comment by Yolanda — November 15, 2006 @ 10:30 am
Oh, dear. Now I feel bad. Last year hubby and I went on an 11 day cruise and I left all the info leaving up to him. Mistake number 1. He wouldn’t let me even get near the internet on the cruise- mistake number 2. (we needed time away from the 5 kids, 3 spouses and assorted grandkids, and my mother- sound reasoning at the time.) They are all adults- mom and the kids anyway. I called home when we left NYC that night and then we had no cell phone access for 2 days. Seems that the morning we left, the cellar flooded, the sump pump died and the hot water tank drowned. It took the youngest one, who is still home, 2 days to realize why there was no hot water (shower anyone?), call her youngest brother, who didn’t know what to do, then her older sister who came over and slogged thru- not kidding here- almost a foot of water and they couldn’t get the tank off. The one shining moment was when she finally remembered that I had left the number to our handy man for her- on a BIG sheet of paper and she called him. He had been warned we would be gone. (he has 8 kids of his own- he knows what it is like) He came over and told me later he thought that they were exaggerating on the amount of water, but they weren’t. Got the sump pump working and the basement drained. Took 2 days until he could come back and restart the hot water tank, which wasn’t ruined. I still don’t think the furnace is working right though. He never did send me a bill for that either- said it was more like he was watching out for the kidlet. The international number we had didn’t work either.
We are going to NYC next week for 3 days and leaving her alone again.
Comment by ev — November 15, 2006 @ 10:38 am
LOL, Julie!!! Again, I told you, we are leading parallel lives. I have three older brothers and guess who always gets the responsibility of phone numbers and stuff? Me. I am the responsible baby sister. I even email my parent’s neighbors (who watch the dog on their vacation) to make sure the dog is fine. What’s funny about this story is it would be my dad who would be doing the calling and not my mom. He also always travels to hotels with high speed internet (paying more) and CAN”T get his laptop to work…annoying my mom who wants to keep in contact at home.
Comment by katie — November 15, 2006 @ 10:49 am
That whole thing sounds very familiar to me. Nothing unusual at all.
Keep us up to date. I’m betting Mom left something on in her house and
needs you to go shut it off. Air conditioning/heat maybe?
Anyway here’s a ((((BIG HUG)))) you surely deserve one.
Comment by jeannie — November 15, 2006 @ 11:48 am
LOL Julie — you have your hands full.
My MIL is a snowbird — she lives in the south in the winter, was AZ, and now is FL, and north, NH, in the summer. She’s in her 70’s and lives in a very nice Winnebago with her dog, and drives herself everywhere, just the two of them. She makes pitstops in between on her travels, staying with family for a few weeks here and there but otherwise is out on the road on her own, so we don’t hear from/about her for long stretches, punctuated with calls every now and then of “do you know where Mom is lately?” Her children are used to this — my husband likes to tell the story of when she “ran away” — he was off in the military, and when he came home she’d sold the house and decided to take off on a cross country trip, and had only let a few people know where she was heading.
Once in a while it produces small headaches, like when we really need to get hold of her, or when she shows up unexpectedly for 2 weeks (we’ve kind of broken that habit, though it took a few years), but all in all I think it’s kind of cool, really, that she’s out there and doing her own thing.
My Dad, by comparison, is almost 87 and doesn’t leave his house much — he’s self-reliant to a fault, and he’ll come to our houses for the occasional family dinner or whatever, but he’s easy to find, generally.
Parents are fun… LOL
Sam
Comment by Sam Hunter — November 15, 2006 @ 11:50 am
I guess the upshot of that last post I did was thinking sometimes parents WANT to escape their kids, not always the other way around, LOL.
Sam
Comment by Sam Hunter — November 15, 2006 @ 11:51 am
OMG. I don;t evenknow what to say. Except maybe…I’m sorry?
They owe you a case of wine.
Comment by Heather Harper — November 15, 2006 @ 12:25 pm
Right now my sister and my bil are in Panama. They left their cell phone behind and I don’t think they gave anybody their itinerary. I think this was their way of escaping the outside world. I think if it was longer than a week they give somebody an itinerary like last year when they went to Korea for 5 weeks. I’m cat-sitting. If they don’t come back by Tuesday, does anybody want a cat?
Comment by Christa — November 15, 2006 @ 12:50 pm
Does this mean this is what your daughter has to look forward to?!
Comment by Susan — November 15, 2006 @ 12:57 pm
Comment by kim H — November 15, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
When did role reversal take place? Why is it that we now get more worried about our parents then they are about us? Hang in there, there should be at least 2 more phone call attempts. Just enough to keep you on your toes! Keep us updated.
Comment by Barbara-Jo — November 15, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
Julie, I feel your pain. Don’t you just love the way our parents end up becoming our problem children. My mother is notorious for calling but she never leaves a message. Then when she finally gets a hold of me, she asks me why I ignored her phone call :wallbash: couldn’t be that I wasn’t home. Chin up and hang in there!!
Comment by Ardie — November 15, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
Okay, Julie I can totally sympathize, but not really relate.
My parents have traveled for years and I have a number of times, had to track them down. They did not have a cell phone back then and they drove to Alaska no itenerary, so….it was up to me to find them hundreds of miles from anywhere in Barrel, Alaska.
yep, I did it, and also everytime my younger sister has run away, I found her, I swear I am like part bloodhound.
Comment by Debbie — November 15, 2006 @ 2:59 pm
Just read the update Julie. Glad they’re OK - at least until you get hold of them.
I do want to make a comment on a serious note. I’m married to a funeral director, who on several occassions, has had the very difficult and unpleasant task of trying to locate missing family members who were out of town when a death occurred. Sometimes it has taken him days to find someone and let them know that a parent, or sibling, has passed away.
We love to get away from it all too, and I definitely think everyone should be allowed to do that. But I do think it’s wise to have some kind of way to be reached in case of emergency. It only makes a horrible situation worse if family members can’t be located.
Sorry for the downer comment, just felt like I should share that because it might save someone from having to go through that.
Comment by Jodie — November 15, 2006 @ 4:20 pm
Part bloodhound…that’s the truth! My mother was shocked when I told her how I tracked down the name of her ship, the name of her travel agent and the name of their tour guide…all information she forgot to leave!
And she’s completely unrepentant, I might add. Harumph. I’m going to have to work on the guilt when they get home…right now, they’re having too much fun!
Yes, I spoke to them. They are fine. They finally called my MIDDLE brother and left him a detailed message of what was wrong…WITH THEIR PHONE. He made all the necessary calls to fix it, but I still wasn’t able to get through. My older brother did and then called me and “conferenced” me in so I could talk to them myself. So all’s well!
I love all these stories. Kim, I was crying with yours. Katie, we are living parallel lives. Heather, a case of Italian wine (Rose Regala, please) would be perfect!
As to all the comments about role reversal…you’ve all got it right. At least they are happy and healthy.
Comment by Julie Leto — November 15, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
Julie I am glad that it all turned out okay, but yes parents can be very exasperating……..If we were to do something like that to them, we would never hear the end of it………….
Comment by Cryna — November 15, 2006 @ 4:46 pm
Comment by Yolanda — November 15, 2006 @ 4:54 pm
I’m so glad all is well - and that your brothers took an active role! Does your mom know they’ve been made famous, and that Plotmonkey fans everywhere, know of their actions?
Comment by Jodie — November 15, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Thank goodness, alls well that ends well!
Comment by Estella — November 15, 2006 @ 5:54 pm
I know it was scary at the time, but after the fact, its hilarious, or maybe I have an odd sense of the ridiculous. You should put it in a story.
Comment by cathy — November 15, 2006 @ 7:59 pm
Glad your folks are okay and the phone was the problem.
Guilt is a very good tool. Use it to your advantage.
Comment by katie — November 15, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
Julie, I feel your pain. My son is working in Dublin, IR. It took me several days to figure out that 011, the International access code from the U.S. is never given out by anyone overseas. Then, you need the proper country code (3 #s) &, then, 9 MORE #s. In the initially # given my son, when he set up the phone, after the 011 & the country code #s, was a zero which doesn’t work from the U.S. So, it was deleted &, finally, it worked. Altogether, 15 #s to remember! Yikes!
Patricia A.
Comment by Patricia — November 16, 2006 @ 12:25 am
Parents - they can spend all that money on a cruise but not for a phone call. My mother and her sister do the same thing - one lives in PA and the other in FL and you would think they were both paupers on how few phone calls they’ll make to each other because of the “great cost.”
Comment by catslady — November 16, 2006 @ 1:50 am
Families! Gotta love them! :love2:
I’m not a worrier because both my mom & my grandmother (her mom) did enough worrying to compensate for several generations! My mom has traveled to Europe & in the US but I never worried about her much, after all she is an adult & she managed to raise 3 children that lived to adulthood! However my mom is a little ditsy!! The only time I got concerned she was here to visit me & then went up to California coast & up the Oregon coast (she lives in Oregon) to visit a friend. When she left here she had told me she would be home by such & such a day. I did not have the name of her friend. My brother & I both tried to reach her after we thought she was home but never could catch her, after about a week we started getting worried as we didn’t know how to reach her friend to see if something was wrong. When we did finally reach her she had just stayed a few extra days because they were having such a good time! Boy did she get a lecture from both of us!! She would not have tolerated that from us & still doesn’t. Now we just don’t tell her things!!! Her health is not good & she is in a nursing home.
Enough tales on the parent. Gotta go to work!
Glad your parents are okay Julie.
Comment by Donna M — November 16, 2006 @ 1:50 pm