Another unintended consequence of "cute" messages is illustrated by what's happened to me over the past 72 hours. Apparently some teenagers called my number by mistake and were so tickled by my answering machine that they've left me 12 messagess, usually about 4 back to back, and then another series the next day. This, of course, fills up my voice mail's capacity as well as making me wade through their inane messages.

I can't tell whether they think I'm a stupid senile old lady or they really find my message amusing, but either way they're (literally?) like kids with a new toy.

If they don't burn out on these silly messages soon, I'm going to have to replace my novelty message with a really boring "You've reached 555-5555, please leave a message at the tone," -- at least for a couple of weeks.