The Case of Mistaken Identity

Many people confuse my Mother and I on the phone. When I stay at their house, I often answer it and am greeted with a "Hello Anne", and before I can utter a response, I've heard all the latest village gossip, been invited to the next book club, asked round for lunch and been put on the rota for the coffee morning and the church flowers. I don't mind getting mistaken for my Mother but what's a little discombobulating is when my boyfriend confuses my Mother for me. Oh dear. 

Last weekend, I was staying at my parents house so I asked Mr Blue if he could call me on their landline, on Sunday evening. Unfortunately, just as their home phone rang, I was talking to a friend on my mobile, so my Mother answered it instead. From what I have gathered from talking to both parties afterwards, this is sort of how the conversation went...

Phone rings, Mother picks up:
Hello?

Mr Blue (thinking it's me): 
Hi darling.

My Mother, not recognising the voice but thinking that anyone calling her 'darling' must be an old friend, responds accordingly with:
Oh... hello darling. How are you?

Mr Blue: 
Ah, great thanks... so how was your day?

My Mother: 
Lovely thank you. And yours?

And so it went on. 

After another minute or so, my Mother realised she still had no idea who she was talking to. Most people would have asked who was calling by now, but my mother felt the conversation had already gone past that stage, so she just kept going... pretending she knew... in the vain hope that suddenly it would 'click'. 

Mr Blue, meanwhile, had started to feel a little apprehensive, especially when he asked:
So, I bet you didn't think I would call the landline?

And my Mother replied, with a giggle:
No, I thought you were going to pop it through the letterbox?

If I was Mr Blue, I would have hung up at this point... I mean, even if it had been me on the other end of the phone, that was 'Mrs Crazy' talking. I suppose it could have been a very weird euphemism for something but even with Mr Blue's wild imagination, it was not quite right. For him, that was when the penny, very loudly, dropped. For my Mother, however, what she had just said about the letterbox made perfect sense. She had quickly decided that the person on the end of the phone must be her new Irish neighbour in the village, who had seen her earlier in the day and promised to drop something off. 

Mr Blue, suddenly realising he had been speaking to my mother the whole time, was now absolutely mortified and quickly explained who he was. He apologised profusely for the misunderstanding and tried to start again, asking her how her day had been. My Mother is not easily flustered, so she simply carried on chatting as if nothing untoward had happened. She told him about what we'd been up to... a bit of gardening, what we'd had for lunch, the jigsaw we'd started, about how difficult the jigsaw was... absolutely scintillating conversation! But then, out of the blue, she asked him how 'Brian' was?

Now, I can explain this. Earlier in the day, I had received a text from Mr Blue while he was at a rugby awards ceremony with his son. His message said that he had gone to the loo and found himself standing next to this famous rugby legend called Brian... he was a little in awe. I thought this was quite a bizarre coincidence because a school friend of mine had married this particular player, and my Mother and I had only been talking about her earlier in the day. We also remembered that this school friend had been on a children's programme when she was younger and unfortunately, the TV host had subsequently been discovered as a prolific sex offender. Not good. Of course, I didnt relay that story back to Mr Blue, all I texted was that my school friend was married to him, and that if he met her, could he say 'hello' from me. 

So when my Mother asked Mr. Blue, "How was Brian?", in the middle of a conversation about jigsaw puzzles, Mr Blue was, justifiably, very confused and said: "Brian who?"
My Mother then launched into the story about my friend being on a children's programme, omitting any explanation that the friend in her story was the same one married to Brian, the famous rugby player, thinking I had already told him. She then ended the conversation with: "Well at least she wasn't molested." 

Poor Mr Blue's brain was rattling by this stage and he didn't really have any sort of comeback to that, so I think, only then, did he ask if I was available to come to the phone? I was still on my mobile and said I would call him back, totally unaware of what had just taken place. So he apologised again, to my Mother, for getting us mixed up and my Mother said it had been lovely talking to him and that she hoped to meet him soon. 

I went into the kitchen about ten minutes later and asked if she'd had a nice chat. She looked amused and said: "Oh yes, we had a wonderful chat. It was a little confusing at first but I thought he was very charming." She wasn't being very forthcoming at all and she also had that look in her eye where I knew something had gone a bit wrong, so I rang Mr Blue to see if he could shed some light on it. He relayed the whole conversation and I was in hysterics. Poor Mr Blue. Welcome to the Sellars family... mad as a box of frogs!

Mr Blue has no idea what he's let himself in for. I thought easing him in gently with a simple phone call might be all right. How wrong could I be?