Monday's Metropolitan Diary in the New York Times led with this item:
I had barely sat down when I heard a voice from the other bathroom stall saying, "How are you?" I don't know what got into me, but I answered, somewhat embarrassed, "Doin' just fine." And the other person said, "So what are you up to?" (What kind of a question is that?)
At that point, I was thinking, "This is too bizarre," so I said, "Uh, I'm like you - just traveling." At this point I was just trying to get out as fast as I could when I heard another question. "Can I come over?" O.K., this question was just too weird for me, but I figured I could just be polite and end the conversation. I answered: "No. I'm a little busy right now."
Then I heard the person say, nervously: "Listen, I'll have to call you back. There's an idiot in the next stall who keeps answering all my questions."
Dorothy Seeber
As Steve Lubetkin first pointed out on his blog, this is a well-worn joke that has circulated on the Internet for some time. But here's the wrinkle: Dorothy Seeber is apparently a real woman. She contacted Daniel Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer who wrote about this on his Blinq blog. As he notes:
The Times gentleman has not gotten back to us, but Dorothy Seeber did. Nice woman, from Jersey.
"No, no. It did not actually happen to me," she said. "I've heard so many funny things that happened about cell phones - that is what I wrote that. ... That is the way life is today. My thought was to even entitle it, "It could happen."
So it's not exactly a hoax. Nor is it a true first person account. Wonder what kind of correction, if any, the Times will run? UPDATE: The Times correction ran on January 4 and reads:
A reader's contribution in the Metropolitan Diary on Monday misstated the origin of an anecdote about a cellphone conversation in a restroom that ended: "I'll have to call you back. There's an idiot in the next stall who keeps answering my questions." It has circulated for years; it was not based on the contributor's personal experience.
