 What didn't happen with the telephone?
It had been a bad day; I had forgotten to wind the alarm clock, so I'd had to hurry to make a story conference at one of the TV studios I write for. I didn't notice the impending rain storm and had no umbrella when I reached the sidewalk, to find myself confronted with an almost tropical downpour. Whizzing traffic held me up at each crossing and I was soaked when I reached the platform, just in time to miss the local. After an abnormal delay, I got one which exactly missed the express at Fourteenth Street. At the moment of the explosion—if so feeble a thing can be called one—I felt something sting my face and, on touching it, found blood on my hand. During the day, by actual count, I heard the phrase "I'm just spitballing" eight times, and another Madison Avenue favorite, "The whole ball of wax," twelve times. The subway gave a repeat performance going home, and as I got to the apartment house we live in, the cop on the afternoon beat was standing there talking to the doorman. I looked blank and he explained, "We just heard it a little while ago: all six elevators in your building jammed at the same time. Psychiatry tells us that some people are accident-prone; I, on the other hand, seemed recently to be coincidence-prone, fluke-happy, and except for the alarm clock, I'd had no control over what had been going on. How to make coffee, how to open a can, whom to call if I took sick and such. My wife used to be a trained nurse and she is quite convinced that I cannot take a breath without her. I noticed one that I had missed, pinned to the door of the dumbwaiter: "Garbage picked up at 6:30 AM so the idea is to Put it Here the Night Before. The Sun was out again and a man with a stick was exercising his flock of pigeons. By some curious chance, they all wanted the same place in the sky to turn in, and several collided and fell. Since our building is usually very well behaved, I was astonished to hear what sounded like an incipient free-for-all, and among the angry voices I recognized that of my neighbor, Nat, a very quiet guy who works on a newspaper and has never, to my knowledge, given wild parties, particularly in the late afternoon.
 Mr. Graham dropped it
 it worked whenever Mr. Graham tried to use it  it repeatedly called Molly's mother  someone needed to come to fix it  Mr. Graham dropped it