A mystery is solved and 'Sulu' is gay

The past week or so I've been getting wrong numbers on my work phone, which is odd, since usually the only person who calls me there is my husband. When I ask what number they were trying to reach, they repeat my own number, so it isn't a clumsy misdialing. When I ask who they are trying to reach, the answer usually was Donna LastName or the Benefits department.

Ah-ha! There is a Donna in Benefits, so they must all be trying to reach the same place, and this is the time of year when we can make changes to our insurance plan, so that is why so many people are trying to reach that department, but why call my number? It isn't at all similar to the Benefits hotline, so it would be unlikely that the cause is a typo in a brochure somewhere. Most perplexing...

This afternoon, while redirecting some retired guy who accidentally called me, I figured it out. The local number he had ended with letters, without giving the corresponding digits. He also had a toll-free number written in the normal fashion. He, and many others, assumed that the letters in the local number corresponded to the numbers in the toll-free number and didn't bother looking at the letters on their telephone keypads. Unfortunately for me, the toll-free number shares the same final digits as my number. Mystery solved!

In other news, it turns out that George Takei is gay. I remember watching reruns of the original Star Trek series and having a bit of a crush on Sulu (right after Spock!). He has such a great voice. I have to admit, I'm not terribly surprised to learn that Takei is gay. Of course, I also would not have been shocked to learn that he is happily married with numerous offspring. I never gave his private life much thought before. I did find it interesting to read that he grew up in an interment camp. That is a part of American history that is often ignored, unless you watch a lot of PBS.