As in,
you are on the phone with someone and you know they have strong phone signal but somehow their voice is muffled. The question isn’t what they’re doing because we all know that effective people are always multitasking. (Ha!)
And sometimes it really is a blessing not to know what they’re doing.
So the question is,
Where are you, Yetunde? Are you under the bed?
I have no memory of myself lying on my belly under a creaky wooden bed, cradling the smooth receiver of our cream-coloured analogue phone in one hand while tracing the O’s of the worn rotary dial with my index finger, the handset cord trapping fluffs of dust and a mummified insect in its twisted coils and the apparently ultra-long phone cord creeping out from under the bed, trailing across the bedroom floor and all the way to the living room, where our only house phone was usually situated. But.
This expression is so interwoven into the fabric of my life that I had never really asked myself where it came from.
Until recently.
On a group call with colleagues at the university:
We can’t hear you Yetunde.
Sorry guys, I was under the bed.
You were what???
And after I explained what I meant;
Is that a saying?