My phone rang this afternoon. I go to look at the Caller ID, and don’t recognize them; it’s a local number. I figure I’ll just let ye olde answering machine get it. The answering machine picks up, and before my recorded voice even has a chance to utter one syllable, the person on the other line goes, “Is Tina there?” then hangs up. “Hmmph,” I think, “she didn’t even get to hear my really great message.”
Well, not two minutes later, the phone rings again. Same person. This time, they do hear the message, which says, “Hi, you’ve reached Carrie’s apartment. Tina does not live here anymore. I do not even know who Tina is. If you want to leave a message for Carrie Paulk, please leave a tone after the message.” In case you didn’t notice, I get calls for Tina a lot. Mostly bill collectors. Anyway, the person on the other line hangs up again, leaving no message. “Hahaha, I finally got to hear my message in action,” I muse.
Two more minutes, and the phone rings again. Surely not the same person, though, right? Yep, one and the same. Message plays again all the way to the end, then the prompt beep is emitted, and she says, “Wrong number,” and hangs up. Wrong number?? It took her three times to figure that out? I worry about some people.
So what’s the story about this Tina character? She’s obviously popular, and not just with the bill collectors. This latest lady sounded like a friend. Where did Tina go, and why did she not tell anybody? There’s the usual guesses: she eloped with her cousin, she went into debt and is now on the run, she was attacked by rabid raccoons. All equally plausible. However, they’re not colorful enough. Here’s what I think happened.
Tina, mother of eight children and wife of some guy wearing a wifebeater, was living a typical normal redneck life, and quite happy, thank you very much. Well, mostly happy; she wished her husband didn’t stink so much. Sorta happy. A little happy. Oh, let’s face it, she was downright miserable; come on, she had eight brats and a stinky husband! So, after watching an episode of Matlock, which is a very educational show if you want to learn how to almost get away with it all, she whacked her husband on the head with a bunch of socks from the local mill that were starched together to create a vicious sock-bat, which killed him dead right then and there. Then, one by one as they came back inside from playing in the storm sewer, she whacked all of her kids as well. In the dead of night, she buried them all in shallow graves in the chert pit north of town. She knew they wouldn’t be missed, as her husband was unemployed, and she wouldn’t let her kids near that new fangled thing they call a school. The perfect crime.
The next day, she cancelled her power bill, newspaper subscription, and paid off the rest of her trailer, and took the rest of the money and headed north. Way north. She hitchhiked all the way to New York City, where she caught a plane to France; she read about their really nice beaches. Once in France, Tina adopts a new name (she is now Teena), buys a hat, chair, and suntan lotion, and headed for the Riviera. Now Teena, a widow, single and loving it, is sunning in the south of France, and is quite happy, thank you very much. Well, mostly happy; nobody told her how much these French stank. . .
That’s what I think happened to Tina.