Hello?

I've heard of it. I've seen it happen on television, usually after the girl living in the penthouse apartment tells her boyfriend she's sleeping with one of her roommates. You think it will never happen to you. You're nothing like those people on the Real World. But then, something happened. BAM! The words being spoken suddenly stopped. 

You sat there, waiting.

While you waited, the idea filters through your mind, like water through a pasta strainer. Nah. You push the thought away, knowing adults don't treat each other that way.

You wait, hearing nothing but crickets.

Son-of-a-bitch, there was no doubting it now. Yes, that really did happen. The angry click made you its hang up bitch, inviting you to the party of done.

Dun, dun, duh, du-un.

The melodramatics of it all dropped your stomach like driving too fast on a hilly road.

You started asking yourself questions that weren't previously in your Rolodex: Did you have it coming? Who were you talking to because you no longer recognized them? How long did you have the phone up to your ear waiting for someone to speak? What was proper after-you've-been-hung-up-on protocol? Was there a support group you could join?

After your internal system settled, you felt it starting in your toes, wiggling up your legs, fluttering over your belly, winding around your head, finally exploding out of you like puss under tightened skin: laughter.

You were sure this wasn't the response the disconnected party intended, but you couldn't help it. You hadn't seen the likes of these Dial Tone Theatrics since...well...never. And you've always been a fan of the theatre. So you wondered why the Real World girl got so angry when her boyfriend hung up his phone and flipped her the middle dial tone finger. It was a spectacle at its Alexander Graham Bell finest, and unlike the people of the Real World, sometimes you had to wait half your life for a ticket to the show. Now, finally, you get to tell others it was worth the price of "admission".