landline, Reporting for Duty, Diamond and Misty

[asakiyume]

Landline

From the age of three until I went to college, I lived in the same town. We moved house once, but our telephone number stayed the same. When technology moved from rotary dial to push-button, I came to know the sound of that phone number by heart. I could "sing" it.

Even after I and my siblings left home, my parents stayed in that house and kept that number. My mother died, but my dad stayed in the house--with that number. He got a cell phone, but kept the landline too.

Now he lives elsewhere, closer to me and one of my siblings. That house has been sold, and the landline disconnected. But I still call it from my own landline from time to time just to hear the push-button tune. So far, the number hasn't been reassigned.

Reporting for Duty

Reporting for Duty is the English-language title of a Brazilian comedy cop show on Netflix, in which a gentle, laid-back guy from a sleepy district gets reassigned to be police chief in a mafia-plagued central Rio precinct. It's pretty hilarious so far. The second episode, "Good Cop, Better Cop," sees the new police chief, Suzano, and the precinct's second-in-command, Mantovani, interrogating a suspect. "Let's do good cop, bad cop," Mantovani suggests. Suzano agrees, and they go in. Mantovani offers the suspect water. Suzano follows with "Some lemonade? A soda? A cold beer?"





Mantovani is getting more and more flabbergasted. When Suzano offers a charcuterie board, Mantovani asks if she can have a word with him. Turns out he didn't recognize her good cop as good cop. "If you're more comfortable being the good cop," she begins, but he says no no no, he can do bad cop. He storms back in. "You think you're getting coffee? Well no! No coffee because the coffee machine is broken!" [established earlier in the episode]. "And no massages, either, except for maybe shiatsu for your health." --And he proceeds to massage out the guy's tensed muscles.



It's a very cute show, and the guy who plays Suzano's sidekick who's come with him from his old precinct has a style of Brazilian accent I really like and have only heard from a guy who teaches ancient Tupi on Instagram.

Diamond and Misty

One of Wakanomori's former students is married and keeps chickens now. He gave W a quartet of eggs, and the carton comes with this cute label that lets you write in what chickens laid the eggs. Ours were laid by Diamond and Misty.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

"You think you're getting coffee? Well no! No coffee because the coffee machine is broken!"

Ahahahaha I startled cackling when I got to this part. The suspect might just be bamboozled into confessing all.

Also love the egg carton with the names of the chickens who laid the eggs. Don't we all in our hearts want to know that Misty laid the green eggs?

[asakiyume]

We dooo, we do want to know. It's a happier, more Robin Wall Kimmerer world when we do.

And yeah, I'm only three episodes into the series (but I think it has like only eight episodes?), but that's exactly what the show is like, with humor and nonviolence getting the results.

There was also a funny thing in this episode where they're asking this detainee to describe a mafia boss, so the sketch artist can draw him, but Suzano keeps asking abstract, nonvisual questions--which the guy readily answers. And then of course the sketch artist comes up with a perfect portrait and describes how it is that she was able to extrapolate stuff from what the guy had said. Very fun.

[sartorias]

That show sounds like fun!

[asakiyume]

It really is! It feels good to laugh. The characters are all very fun.

[sovay]

Now he lives elsewhere, closer to me and one of my siblings. That house has been sold, and the landline disconnected. But I still call it from my own landline from time to time just to hear the push-button tune. So far, the number hasn't been reassigned.

I still remember the landline number of the apartment I grew up in. (I still remember the landline number of my first apartment.)

[asakiyume]

Some things just live on in the mind! (I also for some reason remember my undergraduate ID number--but it doesn't come with a tune.)

[mrissa]

When I was a child, we visited my grandparents up here about every month, driving in Friday night, and every Saturday morning my dad would verify my best-aunt and -uncle's phone number with my mother out loud before dialing my grandparents' phone to confirm plans with them: "it's NNN-NNNN, right?" "right." So I have known that number since before I knew it. I called it at least twice a week until best-uncle went into hospice. I have not thought of calling it again because for me it's the hand motion, not the tones. But I just twiddled my hand through the motion again.

[asakiyume]

A small dance the hand does <3

[light_of_summer]

I still remember the landline phone number I grew up with—for just one house, from before I could remember until I moved out (during college). But that happened (and my then-surviving parent didn't keep the number after remarrying and moving) before push-button dialing reached our area, so I don't think I ever heard the tune that number made.

There's some other little 5-note push-button tune in my memory, but I'm not sure where it's from. I just checked, and it's not my debit card PIN plus #. It might possibly be from some computer operating system or dial-up modem code that I've heard so many times I no longer notice...the relative (not absolute) pitches are something like D, E, C, lower-octave-E, lower-octave-G.

Re egg-layer ID-ing, that's cute! Out here, there used to be an outfit called Redwood Hill that sold goats'-milk products, and every few months, their product packaging would feature a new drawing and paragraph about one of their milk-producing goats.

Sadly, their brand-name changed, fairly recently, and whoever now owns those goats hasn't continued the practice. It was cool while it lasted, though. It really seemed like the old owners loved their goats. The brush-control goats that I see, once a year, in my own neighborhood, generally don't look as well-cared-for as I hope the dairy goats still are... And, counting my blessings, the new owners are still making excellent goats'-milk yogurt. 🙂

[light_of_summer]

P.S.: Do you or Wakanomori happen to know if Diamond and Misty are black chickens, like the ones on the label artwork? (Orpingtons or Australorps, maybe?)

[asakiyume]

If they are, it'll be coincidence: I had wondered if his student and/or wife had made the labels, but it turns out omlet.com does--they must have ordered some stickers from there.

[asakiyume]

Yay for continued goats'-milk yogurt at least! Maybe the new owners just didn't have the artistic wherewithal to keep up the drawing tradition.