I got a very strange phone call today. While I was sipping coffee and reading the daily paper on my lunch break in the coffee shop down the street, my cell phone buzzed. The number wasn’t one I recognized, but it was in the local area code, so it wasn’t the usual telemarketer.

“Hello?” I answered.

There was an awkward pause before I heard a young lady’s voice. She was calling from the shop where I dropped off my shoes to be re-soled. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” she said.

Now that gave me pause. What kind of news could a cobbler’s shop give me that would be bad?

“We were working with new sandpaper today and we put a pretty big scuff in your shoe,” she explained.

Wow. I can’t even imagine how bad a scuff’s got to be to make you feel you have to break the news to me immediately over the phone.

She was serious about it, too. I told her I could drop by after work, say about five-thirty, if they were open that late. “I can stay late,” she said.

“No, no, I don’t want you to stay after,” I said. “How about tomorrow during the lunch hour? I could walk over from the office.” It turned out she was going to a “viewing,” by which I assumed she meant a funeral service, “but I might be back by then.”

“Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning and we’ll work something out.” She offered again to stay late, and I emphasized very strongly that I did not want her to stay late just because she scuffed my shoe. At this point, I was picturing a scuff that burned a hole right through the upper and the sole, like those cannonball wounds that Wile E. Coyote used to get in the Road Runner cartoons.

She agreed not to stay late and I promised to call her. And that was the end of my very strange phone call today.