When I was a little girl in the '90s, my mother worked for a man who was very strict about office phone usage. Since this was long before cell phones, this made communication very difficult. She solved the issue by calling the house every evening before she came home and letting the phone ring once. Thus, for nearly fifteen years of my life, the phone ringing between 4:45 and 5:20 meant that Mom was on her way.

My mother died on March 2nd, 2005 at 1:00 p.m. Every year on March 2nd, my phone rings at one o'clock exactly once. There is no information on the caller I.D. The one time I was able to catch it on the ring, there was nothing but static on the other end. Speaking into it produced an echo. It was very, very frustrating.