Friday 6 April 2012

Just Dial 911 - Cynthia C Muchnick


Marie and Michael had been for some time, and felt fortunate that even though they had different jobs, they were able to talk with each other through their work almost every day - Michael is a police officer, and Marie is a “911” dispatcher, both working for the same police department.
One day, Marie received a call from Michael who said he was out on the road in his patrol car.
“Marie, would you do me a favour?”
“Sure,” Marie answered, happy to have an excuse to talk to him.
“Could you check a license plate for me? I need to see if this guy has any outstanding warrants,” Michael explained.
“Okay, spell it for me.”
“Michael phonetically spelled out the license plate, using code names, as all police officers do, so Marie would be sure to get the right letters:
Will
Ida
Lincoln
Lincoln
Young
Ocean
Union
Mary
Adam
Robert
Robert
Young
Mary
Edward
As she did hundreds of times a day, Marie wrote down the letters on a piece of paper, typed them into her computer, started to run the license check. At first, she was puzzled - this license plate number was too long, even for a personalised plate. Her coworkers, who were in on Michael’s ‘plan’ finally had to say, “Marie, what do those letters spell?”
This time, Marie read just the first letters of each word out loud: W-I-L-L-Y-O-U-M-A-R-R-Y-M-E?
With a car of joy, Marie was all smiles as she got back n the phone to Michael, who was obviously not following any fictitious ‘driver’ with the fictitious plates, but was anxiously waiting in his patrol car for her response.
“Michael, are you there?” Marie began. “Yes Marie?” he responded, his voice cracking a bit with nervousness.
“My answer is: Affirmative!”
There was no ‘copping out’ on this proposal.

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