Phone Talkin' - Part Two, Answering

As I mentioned in the first part, and as some of you might have experienced, I'm super-awkward on the phone. And I'm going to blame the entire resulting conversation on the first five seconds on the phone.

If you call me:
How the BALLS do I answer? With caller id now, I find it superweird picking up the phone and saying, "Hello?" like I don't know who it is! BECAUSE I DO. Every-gd-time I answer the phone, I struggle with this. I usually resort to, "Hey, what's up?" BUT I HATE IT. It's so LAAAAAAMMMMMEEEEEE. Sometimes, if I am expecting your call, I just start talking, but that is weird too. For a tiny bit I tried saying, "Ahoy-hoy" like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons but people didn't understand what I was saying and that caused problems in itself.

So now I'm back to thinking of possible solutions. Here are some things I came up with:
- just making a loud, clearing-my-throat sound (this will be *great* when I'm an old person).
- yelling something in an awkward way like, "OH HI!" or "I'M SO GLAD YOU CALLED" (this serves to remove the unintentional awkward of answering the phone by intentionally answering the phone awkwardly)
- just saying, "Becca." But ultimately, I'd add a hint (read: complete) of inflection at the end so it would sound like a question and the person on the other end will be like, "No, this is Tahlia. You are Becca." Then I would just keep saying, "Becca" because it would be funny. "Yes, you Becca." "Becca." "Stop it." "Becca." "Ugh, I don't even care anymore. Bye." "Becca."
- I could just say, "Hello" without the inflection... BUT THAT'S NO FUN!

So I am welcome to any suggestions.

If I call you:
If I am calling you because I have a question, then there is no problem, because once you answer, I wil just say hey and then start in on my question.

But if I am returning your call, I always resort to the lame "Hey, what's up?" See how lame that reads? It sounds just as lame. But unfortunately, I can't think of any clever way around this one :( Hmm... well, I could always start in on the Beastie Boys song: "Whatcha whatcha whatcha want (whatcha want) I said, whatcha whatcha whatcha want?" Hmm... I sort of like it!

And if I get the "why are you calling me?" response, there's always some good ol' Stevie Wonder: "I just called, to say, I love you... I just called to say how much I care... I just called, to say, I love you..." Priceless.


So that's my part on answering the phone. But you know what's great? This is also not the reason I started a phone post... And what's even greater is that I have completely forgotten what that reason is... so there may or may not be a third installment.