Aaah, let me introduce you to my mother....
The woman was crazy. She would call and I would not answer because I was in a meeting/ driving/ at the gym/ having lunch/ any number of other things. She'd leave a message.
She would call back 30 minutes later. If I was still in a meeting/ driving/ at the gym/ having lunch/ any number of other things, she would leave another message. This one would have a slightly hysterical edge to it*
This would be followed up by a few text messages. Mostly incomprehensible as she never really mastered text messages.
After a very short time, she would start calling other people. DSis. BIL. DH. Usually, she would manage to convince at least one of them to call me because, "Bling isn't answering her phone. I think there's something wrong. I've tried for ages."
Dsis/DH/BIL would ring me. You guessed it, I'd miss the call because of the above reasons. They would leave a message. Usually something like, "Please call Mum. She thinks you're dead. If you're not going to take her calls could you at least please send her a text message so she know you're alive."
I'd eventually (one hour after the original call) get to the phone to see multiple missed calls and increasingly angry or frustrated calls/texts from mum and everyone else. On one occasion, my dad only just managed to convince her not to call the police when I'd turned my phone off for a physio appointment and forgotten to turn it back on until the following morning...
It eventually stopped (kind of) after Mum's dog died. She called me. I was in a meeting and my phone was on my desk. When I got back, there were at least three messages. One was from my sister who basically accused me of being a selfish cow for not responding to Mum's message when her dog had died. I went ballistic. On all of them. Pointed out that I had been out of touch for less than 60 minutes, during a work day and that, believe it or not, I regularly had meetings. I pointed out that my desk phone was ALWAYS answered by someone on my team so if it was really THAT urgent, they could ring the office and someone could get me out of the freaking meeting.
I was furious with all of them, not least my sister who had actually fallen for my mother's woe-is-me story. She's been her daughter for longer than I have so her buying into the BS made me beyond livid.
After that, it calmed down. Although there was the memorable time where it turned out I hadn't been responding much (turns out I was pregnant but didn't know it but had been extremely busy and stressed at work, and feeling like death) and mum spent a month thinking I was mad at her for something!
- My dad told me once he would hear her leaving those messages and he'd think, "Oh Shit. This isn't going to end well".