What is it about 3:30 AM?

So living alone with my children isn't ideal for many reasons.  Seemingly simple things like having someone to help unload the dishwasher or check to make sure the doors are locked or even taking out the garbage...  And then there's the issue of 3:30 AM.  I could write pages about the fears that arise at 3:30 AM, and while most of them relate to fear over financial ruin and despair or the health and well-being of my children, family, and friends, occasionally there's something else.  Last night was one of those nights.

3:34AM, February 12th:  "Ring (well, actually not a ring, but an indiscribable musical ring-tone)!"  I jump out of bed and grab Danny's phone off the bedside table.  Rubbing my eyes, I look at the screen and it says 'new voicemail.'  I think, 'Really?  Now?  The middle of the night?  Who?'  Well, it was the night after the middle school dance.  Could some of his friends be having a sleep over?  With the age of caller id haven't prank calls almost completely gone away?  Could it be a text and a voice mail?  Curt's mom has called Danny's phone before thinking she was calling Curt...could it be her?  Is it one of my nieces?  OK, now I'm awake.  Danny is too because I don't remember his password to get into the phone's mysterious explanation for this rude awakening.

Danny's fiddling with the phone rubbing his own eyes trying to wake and solve the mystery for his soon-to-be frantic, but remaining-calm-on-the-exterior mom.  "No new texts.  Last one was at 7:56 when you picked me up from the dance mom." 
OK, but what about the voice mail? 
He searches received calls.  "These are just calls from before the dance.. you called me and Christian called me." 
OK, but what about the voice mail? 
Danny never checks his voice mail, so it's tricky.  Wait, what about missed calls first.  He goes to missed calls.  It's important to note that Danny (the sweetest and most wonderful 11 year old boy alive) has his own pace in life.  He should have been a Jamaican or a Bahamian.  You know, dude-like, getting the job done in his own time.  He doesn't know warp speed - except for changing into his swimsuit or snow gear, so this like everything he does is happening at a snail's pace.  Normally, I've accepted this about my precious boy, and I've trained myself to slow down the dial when listening to his stories or getting out the door.  But at that moment, I was working hard to hide my anxiety and show only patient curiousity to prevent his panic.

"3:34.  It says you called me mom." 

"What?  My cell phone called you?"  How?  What?  I look at the clock now.  It's 3:38.  What?  No.              

"It's the house phone number.  The house phone called me."

It took only seconds for me to go from zero to sixty in my brain.  "The call is coming from inside the house!"  Both a current thought AND a memory of one of those scary movies from the eighties where the killer is INSIDE the FREAKING HOUSE.  I probably could have single handedly "taken out" anyone who'd entered my home and threatened my children with the amount of fear-induced adrenalin coursing through my veins and capillaries.  But I'm the grown up remember.  The only grown up in the house that is CALLING MY SON'S CELL PHONE!  (Yeah, the 44 year old - how the heck am I 44 years old and in charge of these kids and this house all by myself?) I am the only adult in charge and it's 3:38AM.  AND THE CALL CAME FROM FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE?!!!!!

I'd felt only moments earlier that my thoughts were racing.  Now we were onto 'Fast and Furious' style thinking or panicking and fortunately rationalizing.

OK, the call is from downstairs.  Where is the phone?  Why would my home phone call Danny's phone at 3:34 AM?  Do I go DOWN THERE?  What if?  What?  This is crazy! 

Rationalizing - Could it be because the bill is late?  A warning message that the phones will be turned off?  OK, which ones are late?  Oh, all of them.  No, that's silly.  They don't call you at 3:34 AM about this stuff, do they? 

OK, this is Daddy and his "other-world" friends that like to play with me in this house.  Setting off the music box that is in the off position, making Elmo talk without functioning batteries, forever playing with the lights in Danny's and my bedrooms, and lately, the voices (did I say that out loud?).  The time is so Poltergeist or Amityville Horror, isn't it?  3:34.  OMG  Do I see shadows?  Really?  Oh Geez...

OK, stop.  No.  There's an explanation.  You know there is.  It's Verizon after all. 

"Danny, (only seconds have past since he told me the origination of the call, but I've had 30 minutes worth of thoughts pass through my mind)  listen to the voice mail."
"OK, how do I do that?  Oh, yeah, I remember I pressed this button earlier today when I.... and then.... so I think...."
(GREAT! one of Danny's random stories that starts in the middle again AND it does NOT relate to this situation!!!!) 
"Dan, just listen to the voice mail honey, OK?" 
I'm wide awake and so is Carter now. 
"Who is it Dan?" Carter asks. 
Carter and I watch Danny's face as the rather bright glow of his cell phone illuminates his face as he listens to voice mails. 
"Oh, that was just Christian earlier today...he was calling because....I couldn't find my phone..." (Oh my God.  This boy has no idea how freaked out I am and I can't let it on, but he has to stop giving me this seemingly non-relevant information right now!!!!!) 

Finally, THE CALL.  THE VOICE MAIL.    His face changes.  His eyes get bigger and he scrunches his eyebrows together in that quizzical and fearful way.  The sound is turned up so I can hear it but vaguely.  Danny's listening intently.
He says, "It's jibberish... I can't understand it.  Sounds like a TV in the background."

OH MY GOD!  It IS a ghost!  Jibberish?  Don't they have to replay the jibberish backwards or slowly to make out the message?  Crap! 

Well, wait a minute.  It's a prank.  Nobody wanted to follow through.  They were standing there giggling with their hand over the phone, right?

No, jibberish is definitely a ghost.  But our TV isn't on.  Daddy's trying to get in touch with me.  What is it?  Oh my God are we in danger?  WHO IS IN THIS HOUSE????????????

OK, breathing.  Breathing.  Laying in bed - calm exterior for the boys.  "That's weird. Well, let's just get back to sleep.  We'll figure it out in the morning.  Maybe a wrong number."

Seriously, what the heck is going on??????????

Then, it occurred to me.  Danny's phone had been missing and he had found it in a sweatshirt in his laundry basket.  When he told me about this earlier, I had thought he'd done quite a search AND was seriously impressed that he'd gone through the laundry basket when he usually doesn't look beyond the doorway.  But, he hadn't.
"Danny, did you call your phone earlier today to find it?" 
"Oh, yeah.  I did."
"What time do you think that was?"
"After school."
"Around 3:30?"
"Oh, yeah!" 
"So the missed call was 3:34 PM?"
"Yeah!  Isn't that weird?"

Yes, still weird, but so much less weird than I thought.

So Danny's phone spazzed out and called him to let him know that he'd received a voice mail exactly twelve hours earlier. 

Why? 

Who knows?

No prank call.

No family members trying to reach me in the middle of the night with another disaster.
No.

Just a little ghostly hello? 

Perhaps.