After moving to our new, cozy apartment in the early 1980s, we arranged for a telephone. Shortly thereafter we realized the need for a second line, so we asked them to give us an easy number to remember.

We set up our fax machine on the first line, so that our easy-to-remember line would be used as our main number.

However, that number was a bit too easy to remember when a new health clinic opened in our neighborhood. Their phone number ended in "441." Our number ended in "411." Soon, we knew everybody's tzuris and health problems. Everybody's. They all seemed to get the number wrong, and we were inundated with wrong numbers.

Perhaps some people would have appreciated that pleasure. We didn't.

It's not enough that all of them dialed the wrong number. Sick people apparently don't understand that the next time, they should dial a different number. They redialed our number instead – over and over again.

Even healthy people kept redialing our number instead of the Kupat Cholim. For some perverse reason, they felt that if they first wrong number did not go through to the health clinic, then perhaps it would work on the second try - or on the third or fourth try. They just pushed the Redial button again. And again. And again. And again.

This became a major problem. We were overwhelmed with wrong numbers.

There might be many ways to solve a problem like this. Perhaps we might have been able to deal with Bezeq, our local telephone company, but we anticipated a great deal of difficulty getting that bureaucracy to move.

We had to solve the problem ourselves, so we took matters into our own hands. We decided that the simplest solutions are sometimes best.

We switched our fax machine to the new line - the line that had a number similar to that of the clinic. We told our contacts to use the original number for our voice calls.

Oh, yes, people continued to dial our other line. They still do - decades later. However, their delicate ears are now graced with the screech of a fax line. Yes, sometimes they redial the number incorrectly. They might even do it several times. However, we no longer have to deal with them. Either they khap after several screeches of the fax line, or they don't. That's no longer our problem.

Later on, we used that line for our dial-up Internet connection. That would mean that they got a busy tone instead of a fax number. That's OK.

We no longer babysat the telephone. Life took on new meaning for us.

To make matters still easier, we turned down the ringer on the fax phone. We hardly hear it at all.

One more problem solved the easy way.