“What is Barack Obama’s phone number?” “How can I sue Hannaford’s?” “Why is the alien-controlled FBI out to get my thoughts?” “How come you guys don’t know the difference between its and it’s?”

We field a lot of weird phone calls at a newspaper. Some are weirder than others. Often, getting the answer is pretty easy – just a couple taps on the keyboard and out pops the phone number or name or date of the information requested. It’s (ha-ha!) part of the public service we feel we provide. We are a source of information, though not in the same way as the people on the other end of 4-1-1.

Some people think newspaper people know everything – largely because we act like we do. And sometimes people get a bit testy when it takes a bit of time figuring out the address for “those people who help animals I think I read about in your paper maybe a few months ago.”

Sometimes people call to complain about what is in our papers and other times people call to complain about what isn’t in our paper.

Each of our papers runs a calendar we call “Things To Do,” we thought it would be fun to run a little joke under the April 1 heading. Each was specific to the communities and a play on some controversy we’d covered in the paper. We got a call asking for more information about this gag in the Gazette: “Bonny Slots Casino and Gaming Parlor Grand Opening (formerly Gorham Sports Center) 215 Narragansett Street in Gorham. Doors open at 4:01 p.m. Children welcome! FMI, call April Fools at 282-4337.”

Our joke in the Scarborough Leader caused a minor eruption among the silver set. The offending items read: “Groundbreaking celebration for Orion Senior Center and Middle School municipal complex begins at 4:01 p.m. Tour the site for the 300,000-square-foot activity and learning center, pool, indoor soccer field and IMAX theater. View sampling of building materials including mahogany, teak, gold leaf and baby sealskin. FMI, call April Fools at 282-4337.”

We got calls and letters from people who thought it was real, people who didn’t think it was funny and people who initially thought it was real and didn’t think it was funny that someone would trick them. Some people were really angry and connected it to an improbable conspiracy between the Leader and a sometimes contributor.

For the record, the South Portland Armory building is not the capitol building for the newly seceded state of Casco and the former Gorham Sports Center does not have slot machines (but children are welcome).

School honor rolls are something people tend to call about when they don’t read them in the paper. We think it’s important to put such achievements in our papers – our small way of giving these kids a pat on the back. The problem with honor rolls is they all arrive at once and depending on the number of communities and the size of those communities a particular paper covers, that can mean a lot of honor rolls. We can either fill a significant chunk of a paper with lists of children’s names, or break them up over several issues. The news business requires that sometimes, we have to bump an honor roll to make room for something we decide is more important. Finally, there are times we simply forget that we haven’t run a particular honor roll. And so, people begin to get concerned when they don’t see the particular list with their particular child’s name.

Recently, we received a call from a concerned reader wondering why she hadn’t seen one such honor roll and maybe she just missed it. No, she hadn’t missed it; the school had not released it.

She was glad we hadn’t run it yet, but was disappointed we still planned to do so.

Wait, what?

The caller had a philosophical issue with the concept of honor rolls: they make the children not on them feel bad. Well, that’s a new complaint, but not entirely surprising in this pain-free world we’ve tried to construct around today’s youth; this world where everyone gets a trophy and no one keeps score. This no-fault-everyone-is-number-one world isn’t completely new. It’s been around long enough that its inhabitants have grown-up (at least chronologically) and entered the real world with a shock akin to a New Year’s Day lobster dip. The awakening begins when young adults show up to job interviews wearing flip-flops as if comfort is paramount and continues as their managers realize that part of their own job responsibilities now require a significant amount of time providing constant affirmation and hand-holding to people unaccustomed to expectations beyond their own gratification.

As someone who never made it onto an honor roll until his second attempt at college, I had bigger things to worry about than not seeing my name alongside classmates who actually bothered to turn in assignments and study for tests. The kids who earned good grades were rewarded and my young psyche did not explode when contemplating this causal relationship. Nor was I scarred when I didn’t get the things my parents tried to use as bribes in order to get me to do better.

But everyone is entitled to their opinions and as long as I’m on this end of the phone I continue to be amazed by how people interpret the world and order their values.

Every once in a while it’s my turn to scratch my head and wonder: “What were they thinking?”