August 3, 2011:  There is nothing more gratifying at 7:45 in the morning than a phone call in the middle of coffee from the phantom interrupting my barely conscious watching of "Fox & Friends."

I am not a morning person and rely on silence to assimilate into the day ahead.  This will be hard for you to believe:  I don't verbalize at daybreak.  It's been a complaint of every woman I've lived with.  All discussions are out when pondering which foot to put forward in the morning.  Monosyllabic grunts representing "yes" or "no" should be considered conversation.

In my A.M. world "hello" is a big deal.  "Good morning" is out until I see proof.

Imagine my annoyance, then, when the phone rings two or three times a week and I scamper over Ike, leap the coffee table and forearm the potted plant to answer, only to be greeted by silence.  The phantom has dropped another quarter to exasperate the hell out of me.  Always the caller ID simply reads 1-800.  It is the caller with no name, the ghost in the wire.

The other day the phone rang and it was the NRA to inform me that my Second Amendment rights were in jeopardy.  It was 7:50 am.  I told the solicitor if he called me during coffee again I would have to shoot him.

Robo calls are to get worse over the next year as the presidential election draws near.  It's starting already.  I actually received a call from the DNC telling me Medicare is being taken away by the RNC and I should start building the pine box.  The next day I got the opposite argument from the RNC.  At least there was an identifying taped message on the other end.

Are you old enough to remember when the phone was your friend?  The device was gregarious and you heard most of the time from friends.

The phone has become the new source of cheaper junk mail; no wonder the post office is in trouble.  Now vendors call to push everything from storm shutters to deals on no-money-down flooring.

I remember the transition from live operators who connected you to the rotary dial.  I didn't care for it because I had become friends with the operators and they knew me by voice.  My first rotary call was to "Burg" Hackenburg, and learning to dial took several dry runs.

Certain neighbors in Alger Court had party lines that were shared lines.  Once in a while the lines would cross and you could listen in on your neighbors' conversations.  It was the first reality show and some of the conversations were priceless.

I was home alone one afternoon and picked up the phone to make a call.  Instead, I overheard a disliked and "kid-hating" neighbor who lived the floor below engaging a moving company on the party line.  When Betty came home I informed her that my wiretapping skills yielded big news.  She was so happy she made scratch chocolate chip cookies to celebrate.

In the beginning there was only one phone and my main rivalry over its use was Betty.  Then Fred declared, "Let there be another phone brought forth to this household," and behold, there was momentary peace but still one line.  Eventually, a second line was added to avoid phone hogging.

While the campaign and political issue appeals are bothersome, they don't come close to the mystery of the phantom's endless success in interrupting my morning beverage.

Calling the phone company reporting harassment from an 800 number gets operator giggles only.  I have worn the star off the phone dialing *69 to retrieve the number.  My search results have collapsed to despair.

For a while I thought it could be an ex-wife or an estranged relative.  I crossed them off; neither wants to hear from me, ever.

Then it dawned on me, it's the neighbor from 5C in Alger Court, and she's finally getting even from the beyond.  I shouldn't have used our long hallway above hers as a bowling alley.  It was just a little bit of ceiling plaster easy to sweep up, really.