Once upon a time I had a dancing partner named Sally. Our usual routine was for me to drive over to her place, pick her up, and drive to the dance studio for lessons or to one of our favorite Country-Western nightclubs. But one day, I had to have some work done on my car, and so she needed to come over to my apartment instead. I live in a gated apartment complex, and there are two ways to get in. The first is to dial a three-digit code, which will ring the phone in the apartment of the person one intends to visit. The tenant, upon answering the phone and ascertaining who it is, can punch the number 6, letting the visitor in. The second way is for the tenant to give the visitor the access code that he uses himself, which is a four-digit number preceded by the #-key.
Knowing that Sally would be coming over that day, I had written down my access code on a piece of paper and given it to her the night before. That number was #1156. When she arrived at the gate, she looked at the piece of paper, and thinking that the “#” symbol merely meant “number,” she did not punch the #-key, but only entered the number 1156. The computer treated this as a phone number, dropping off the 6 at the end. My mother also lived in the same apartment complex I did, though in her own apartment, and by a remarkable coincidence, her gate phone number was 115. My mother answered the phone, and the following conversation ensued:
Mom: “Hello.”
Sally: “I’m sorry. I was trying to get in the gate to visit a friend of mine. He gave me the access code, but I got you on the phone instead.”
Mom: “Who did you want to visit?”
Sally told her my name, and my mother, who had never met Sally, figured it must be my dancing partner, and without saying anything else, punched the number 6, letting her in. When Sally got up to my apartment, she told me what happened: “I punched the access code you gave me, but I got some lady on the phone instead. Fortunately, she let me in.”
I didn’t realize that she had failed to punch the #-key, so I shrugged and forgot about it. A few days later, while talking to my mother, I found out that it was she who had answered the phone and let Sally in. I assumed it was just a coincidental computer glitch, and I forgot all about it, not bothering to mention it to Sally.
Several weeks later, Sally came over to my apartment again, and again she did not punch the #-key, which had a similar result as on the previous occasion, my mother once more letting her in. When Sally got up to my apartment, she came in through the door completely exasperated, saying, “I got that same lady again!”
“That was no lady,” I said, “that was my mother.”