The Sound of Silence

I don't know if you guys get this in Chicago, but we get this a lot in our neck of the woods.  The phone rings, you answer it, and there appears to be nobody on the other end.  Some people just hang up, but I like to follow through on these calls.  If you wait a minute or less, the other party hangs up with not a word spoken.  I read somewhere that this is often a "dropped call".  Certain spammers and scammers have a machine that dials their phones for them.  When one of the phones make a connection, it alerts the spammer/scammer who picks up the phone and interacts with his victim.  If the spammer/scammer is busy on another line, after a predetermined amount of time, the machine hangs up on that call and starts dialing another one.

I have long wondered if anybody on the other end can hear anything I might want to say during this period of silence, like "All you elephant niggers suck out of my ass!", for instance.  I would never say anything like that to a real person, but I figure those spammer/scammers deserve it, and they probably can't hear me anyway.  I recently found out that this is not the only reason you might get the sound of silence when you answer the phone.  I also discovered that the other party may indeed be able to hear you, even if you can't hear them.  To protect the privacy of any innocent party that may be involved in something like this, let me give you a hypothetical example.

Let's say, hypothetically, that you were involved in a minor traffic accident a year and a half ago.  Let's say that you told the attending policeman that that this may have been caused by an undiagnosed medical condition for which you have already resolved to seek medical attention.  Let's say that this incident put you on the radar of the Secretary of State Driver Assessment Department, which, after an elaborate procedure, determined that you were safe to drive as long as you followed you doctor's instructions, which you did.  Let's say that you were due for a re-evaluation now, and there was some kind of problem with your paperwork.  Let's say that the agent in charge of your case called you on the phone to inform you of the problem, but due to some technical difficulty beyond your control, you could not hear him, even though he could hear you loud and clear.  Let's say, hypothetically of course, that you innocently assumed this was one of those dropped spammer/scammer calls and mildly remonstrated those alleged spammer/scammers with something innocent like, "All you elephant niggers suck out of my ass!"  

I think you will agree that this would be an honest mistake that could hypothetically happen to anybody.  Nevertheless, you would be required to drive all the way to Petoskey to beg forgiveness from this agent in front of numerous other people because he would not let you in his office..................or so I have been told.