A not so late call

The phone was ringing.

I woke and looked around, remembering where it was that I had laid down. A dormitory at some college without air conditioning after a hot day. But there was still a breeze. The advantage of a corner room.

The phone was still ringing, as expected. My friend was calling to let me know what time the team was meeting for breakfast in the morning. I grabbed the phone from the windowsill and read the time. It was 9:30, I'd been asleep for about an hour and a half, starting to recover from a hard ride in 90+ temperatures.

I stared at the display on the phone for another second, it rang again. I couldn't remember how to answer the phone. I was clear that swiping my finger across the bar at the bottom of the screen would answer the call from Ted West. The mechanics were easy of answering the phone, the problem was I couldn't remember how to answer the phone. What did one say after one had made the swipe?

Apparently, I hadn't gotten it right by saying a less than certain hello when the caller said "Hi Matt, it's Ted, how are you?" As much as I cared about when breakfast was, I was struck that he identified himself at the start of the call, after all, I had a cell phone with caller-id and we'd agreed earlier that he'd call me to relay that info. Ah well, nevermind, a trip to the bathroom, a fresh glass of water, setting the alarm for 5:20 and more sleep would solve all of these concerns.

Two weeks later, I'm still amazed at my inability to figure out how to interact with another human by saying "hello", a perfectly acceptable greeting, but the mechanics of making the phone answer the call weren't.