Standing outside a broken phone booth with money in my hand

So I got a call from my good friend, Jon Bates, tonite. 3 calls actually, but I was in a movie, so I didn’t hear a single one of them (it was Beowulf, not bad, but not that great either). He’s been on a submarine for a week, and they’d returned to port for the night, so he was making his calls. He doesn’t have a cell phone while at sea, so he was calling from a pay phone using a calling card, and on his last attempt, he had given up getting a hold of me. That was at 9:15.
At 9:47 I got out of the movie, and checked my messages. I was totally bummed that I’d missed his call — knowing I wouldn’t likely hear from him again until January when his sub returned, but given how he was calling, I knew there was nothing I could do.
Then, as I was getting in the car to leave, I randomly decided that I’d call back the number anyway, just to see what happened. On the first ring, someone picked up with a curious “Hello?”
It was Jon, and get this: the pay phone had no ringer! He had just happened to pick up the handset at that exact moment to make another call! What are the odds of that?
Anyway, life on a submarine sounds very interesting — about what you’d imagine from having seen movies, save for the complete lack of non-stop action. That, and apparently they get really good food.
So, a random chance connection with a pay phone in Hawaii, and a couple nice meals with our good friends Jason and Brooke managed to salvage what was set to be a rather lonely Thanksgiving weekend. Thank God for good friends and little miracles!

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