I change my outgoing voicemail message every morning to reflect the current date. It usually goes something like:

This is Jamie Rubin. It’s Thursday, May 11. I’ll be in the building all day today. Please leave me a message.

This morning, when the system beeped to record my outgoing message, I coughed and, of course, had to start over. The next several minutes were hilarious because every time I started to record, I started laughing because I thought it was funny that I coughed. Soon it snowballed and I was laughing because I was laughing. Finally I gave up. So today, the last sentence of my outgoing message is barely understandable because I am laughing so hard as I say it.

Interestingly, the four or five voicemails I have gotten today almost all start off with the person leaving the message laughing at what they heard, and telling me how funny it is. Well, it is, but I didn’t do it on purpose.