The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing

Summary

On my first night at the desk, a student supervisor comes out to shake my hand. It’s Cora Baldwin, a senior about to finish her degree in software engineering. Her voice is soft and gentle, maybe a little nervous, like she’s afraid she might be intruding. She shows me around the desk and introduces me to the students answering the phones. “I’m not really sure how to host you,” she says, “but I want to make you feel welcome. What can we do?” The students let me hover over their shoulders while they do their jobs. There’s a lot of “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” Students say they know which callers expect to be addressed that way. The thicker the southern accent, the greater the expectation. Hours later, the building is quiet, Foy is about to close for the night, and we’ve likely heard the last of the calls. The students and I are circled up in our rolling chairs, and they’re telling stories about their favorite calls. Many they’ve never shared before. Like late-night conversations in college tend to do, the mood becomes confessional. Cora says she believes the calls she answers are the ones she’s meant to answer. No coincidences. I want to know whether there have been any calls that the students just can’t get out of their heads. One of them talks about the hour they spent on the phone with a caller, helping her plan a trip from Arizona to Canada. Another talks about a kid who called to complain that he was bored, but clearly he was alone and very, very lonely. That was a long call. Then Cora tells us this: Two years ago, while working a day shift, she answered a call from an older gentleman. He had a list of celebrities and wanted her to look up their birthdays, month and day. “As I read out the dates, he would say something like ‘Mmmhmm, OK. OK, that makes sense.’” He told her that he could deduce things about people with no more information than that. They chatted about what Cora was studying, and what kind of career she had in mind. Another caller who needed someon...