Every night at 12:30am, my telephone rings. When I answer it, no one is there. If I hang up, it rings again. This has been going on for months, and I'm sick of it. To add to the mystery, each night after I *69 to see who the mysterious caller is, I get a different number in my local exchange. Tonight it was a residence on Silk Hope/Gum Springs road. A couple of weeks ago I got several different numbers from Big Hole Road. The Big Hole is a serious source of local legend and that weirded me out a bit.

Now, though, I'm no longer excited, surprised or concerned when the phone rings at 12:30am. No, I'm not worried that there is a robber at the nearest telco switch, pinging my line to see if anyone is awake. I'm not frightened that zeta reticulans are calling to invite me to tea. No, now I'm just peeved. I intend to do something about it, just as soon as I can get a living, breathing human being from the local telco on the phone. Of course, my local telco is Sprint, so it may be more likely that the reticulans invite me to tea.