How to Successfully Call Friends and Never Speak with Them

 Communication, Essays, Family, Friends, Humor, Memory Mondays, Technology  3 Responses »
Feb 042013
 

Man Listening to Voicemail MessageIt’s not easy to talk to me, even though my iPhone is with me 24/7. It’s because I split my time between my day job and the book­store. When I’m not either of those places, I’m usu­ally run­ning errands, clean­ing the house, washing/drying clothes, or iron­ing. Some­where in the midst of all that activ­ity, I blog and write three pages per day on a com­ing of age novel that never seems to end. (Set in the ‘80s, the only thing keep­ing this story from being a mini series is Jane Sey­mour in a pair of should pads!)

Often when friends call me, I’m unable to speak with them, so I let them go to voice mail, with the inten­tion of return­ing the call as soon as pos­si­ble. Fre­quently, I’m unable to find the time or for­get until it’s after mid­night and I’m wind­ing down for the night, so I put it off until the next day … and then the next … and they told two friends, and so on, and so on.

Today, while I was iron­ing, the stars aligned and I real­ized I could call all the peo­ple I like and love (some­times they are exclu­sive) and have not spo­ken with in ages. I man­aged to speak with two of them, but left mes­sages for the rest, receiv­ing a text back from one before she went on stage for a mati­nee in Indi­anapo­lis. (You never know where in the world Cherry is! Iron­i­cally, she used to just live one street over from my house.) The rest, I didn’t hear back from, which makes me wonder.

I pic­ture them doing some­thing inter­est­ing, and their phone rings. They take a peek and see my name appear on the dis­play and think, Damn! I’d really love to take this call from Jef, because he’s such a witty and fas­ci­nat­ing fel­low, but it’s prob­a­bly not a good idea to do so while I’m assist­ing in the deliv­ery of a calf or under­cover as a teenage pros­ti­tute to stop the head of an inter­na­tional human traf­fick­ing ring in Walla Walla, Wash­ing­ton. Regret­fully, they let my call roll over into voice­mail and the cycle continues.

Here’s the dis­turb­ing part, though. The longer I go with­out return­ing a phone call to a friend, the more sub­con­scious pres­sure I feel to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion, even though I might not have time to talk until sev­eral days from that moment. There­fore, I have pur­posely begun call­ing some friends when I know they can­not pos­si­bly take my call, because then I can say I have called and not have to talk to any­one when I don’t have time to talk. But I’ve returned the call and now the ball is in their court, which prob­a­bly explains why they usu­ally call me when it seems they should know I’m not afraid to talk. Will we ever connect?

Do you find it dif­fi­cult to con­nect with friends nowa­days? Do you ever pur­posely call a loved one when she’s not avail­able, just to trans­fer the respon­si­bil­ity of the phone call fall on her instead of you?

Sorry, El Numero Wrongo

 Communication, Humor, Memory Mondays, Technology  4 Responses »
Nov 192012
 

Sev­eral years ago, my mobile phone would some­times ring in the mid­dle of the night. Always sus­pect­ing the worst, I would tum­ble out of bed and stag­ger across my bed­room to answer it.

“Hello! Hello!” I would say. The per­son on the other end of the phone–sometimes male, some­times female–would begin speak­ing in rapid fire Spanish.

On my best days, I need for Span­ish speak­ers to talk slowly for me to under­stand what they’re say­ing; I’m even worse when I’m woken in the mid­dle of the night. Ordi­nar­ily, it would be easy enough to remem­ber to say, “No hablo Ingles” and try to assist them; how­ever, I could never seem to do so dur­ing this after mid­night calls. Instead, they reached me, who replied, “Um …”

After sev­eral attempts to deliver his or her mes­sage, the Span­ish speaker would hang up on me. I would typ­i­cally remain awake for some time, wor­ry­ing that per­haps this Span­ish speaker had been kid­napped and man­aged to chew through the ropes bind­ing them to the chair to reach the tele­phone and call for help only to reach some­one who couldn’t under­stand a lick of what they were saying.

After sev­eral months of receiv­ing ran­dom tele­phone calls in the night, I did man­age to spit out, “Um, sorry … el numero wrongo.”

““Por que?”

““You have the wrong number.”

And they never called again. I remem­ber telling my friend Trixie about it, won­der­ing if that Spanish-speaking fam­ily was okay.

““How do you know they were in trou­ble?” Trixie asked. “Maybe they were mak­ing obscene calls and just thought you had a sexy voice.”

I con­sid­ered this and decided it was another good rea­son to learn to speak Span­ish flu­ently. “¿Qué llevas puesto?”

Why the Road to Hell Stops Here

 Books, Bookstore, East Atlanta Village, Essays, Humor, Jobs, Memory Mondays, Technology  No Responses »
Oct 152012
 

As I was pulling the clear­ance cart into the book­store the other evening, a young man, who appeared to be home­less, asked if he could have a mass mar­ket mys­tery. It was only a dol­lar, and the kid appeared to be car­ry­ing every­thing he owned in a back­pack, so I gave it to him. I fig­ured maybe it might bring some relief from the hard­ships of life on the street. One of the other busi­ness own­ers saw me, and he told me later, “You did a good deed tonight.”

““Care­ful,” I warned. “You know that no good deed goes unpunished.”

““Okay, but you’re inten­tion was good.”

““Hello, you know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.”

“”@#%*, dude, can’t you take a compliment?”

A few days later, the same kid came into the book­store with his–are you ready for this–Kindle. Yes, the elec­tronic e-reader sold by Ama­zon. “Do you mind if I plug my Kin­dle in and recharge it in here?”

There have been very few times in my life when I have been speech­less, but I knew I needed to think before I responded.

First, I just gave this kid a book.

Sec­ond, it’s no secret that inde­pen­dent book­stores have been chal­lenged by the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of e-readers, and Ama­zon in par­tic­u­lar, so you’ve got to be either really gutsy to walk into a book­store and ask that ques­tion or ignorant.

Third, he doesn’t have a home, but he has @#%& e-reader! If you have no money and you’re ask­ing peo­ple to give you books, how do you buy books to down­load to your Kin­dle. Granted, he could have been read­ing free books that are in pub­lic domain, except I saw the title of the New York Times Best­seller that he was reading.

I looked into my heart and searched for all the Jesus I had in me. I don’t like say­ing no. I like help­ing peo­ple. How­ever, what mes­sage does it send when I let peo­ple recharge their e-readers in my inde­pen­dent book­store. Fur­ther­more, I need to sell books to pay for the elec­tric­ity to charge e-readers, let alone the books that I give away to home­less peo­ple whom I assume have not Kin­dle. Ulti­mately, the Jesus I had in me that the road to hell needed to stop here, so I said, “No, you can­not recharge your Kin­dle in our bookstore.”

As the kid turned around and headed for the door, he said, “I didn’t think you would, @#%*.”

What's the Story with Middle-Aged Women Sharing Theories About Bisexual Men While Shopping in Discount Clothing Stores

 Humor, News of the Weird, Relationships, Retail, Technology, What's the Story? Wednesdays, Women's Interest  1 Response »
Aug 222012
 

I was in Marshall’s last week, search­ing for a pair of cheap sun­glasses after one of vagrants who roam my neigh­bor­hood at night and rifle through cars stole mine (along with my col­lec­tion of Taco Bell nap­kins), when I heard a woman say, “You know, I totally get bisex­ual men.”

I slowly leaned to the left and peered past the sun­glasses carousel, still wear­ing the mir­rored avi­a­tor shades that really don’t suit my face. A big-boned woman in her mid-thirties, dressed entirely in pink, was perus­ing baby doll t-shirts and talk­ing to a tall, skinny, tired woman in work­out clothes–even her pony tail looked exhausted.

““What do you mean?” the tall, tired woman asked.

““Well, I use a PC at work, but I have a Mac at home.” She held up a pink t-shirt that was so small that even Bar­bie would have thought twice about putting it on.

The tired friend shook her head.

““Any­way, I appre­ci­ate both Microsoft and Apple prod­ucts.” She held up a lime-green t-shirt, scrunched up her face, and put it back on the rack. “You know, first it seems so wrong to to use a Mac. It’s almost like a PC, but some of the keys have dif­fer­ent names and there’s no lit­tle hour glass to tell you that the computer’s think­ing. But before you know it, you real­ize how nat­ural that lit­tle ergonomic Apple mouse feels in your hand and how sexy those curves are on that iMac dis­play, and the next thing you know, you are press­ing CTRL+X at work to copy and COMMAND+X at home with­out even think­ing about it. And that’s exactly how bisex­ual men on the low down are, they can switch between AC and DC with­out even think­ing about it.”

The tired friend stared at her a moment.  “Judg­ing from the look in your eye, it seems like you pre­fer the Mac.”

““Honey, once you’ve had Mac, you’ll never go back!”

““So, why don’t you just ask your boss to give you an Apple com­puter at work?

The woman tensed up. “That’s where I really under­stand bisex­ual men. I don’t want to choose between the two.”

““Why not?”

The woman bit her nail. “You know, those I.T. guys can be very judg­men­tal. They teased me when I got my iPhone, and they con­stantly shove their Android phones in my face. They will resolve the trou­ble tick­ets for my co-workers who have PCs at home before they fix my prob­lem.  Some­times they walk by my desk and say to me in a dis­parag­ing stage whis­per, ‘Apple lover!’”

““Valerie, are you ashamed of your Apple?”

““Of course not! But why should I have to choose between two things I love equally.” She brushed her hair back off her shoul­ders. “Besides, it might just be a phase.”

The tired friend turned and started search­ing through a rack of jeans and whis­pered, “Apple lover …”

““SHUT UP!”

Word Up Wednesday: Rekindle

 Dictionary, Humor, Parody, Pop Culture, Technology, Vocabulary, Word Up Wednesdays  No Responses »
Aug 152012
 

Rekin­dle (verb) \ree-kin-dl\ — to give an e-reader pur­chased or received as a gift to some­one else.

Exam­ple: Travis’ wife bought him a new reader, expect­ing that he would give his old one to her; how­ever, she got upset when he rekin­dled his old e-reader to his ex-girlfriend.

Can you use rekin­dled in a sentence?

Top Ten Weirdest Search Engine Terms Used to Find My Blog

 Blogging, Humor, News of the Weird, Social Media, Technology, Top Ten Thursdays  7 Responses »
Jul 192012
 

Every so often, I check the space age thinga­ma­jigs on my web­site to get the stats that I’m not com­pletely sure that I under­stand.  I do, how­ever, under­stand search engine terms, which are the words and phrases that peo­ple type into Google and other search engines to find links to related web­sites.  Glanc­ing down the list of key­words used for Inter­net searches, I’m com­pletely baf­fled by some of the words and phrases that bring vis­i­tors to my web­site.  Here are the top ten weird­est search engine terms used to find my blog:

01. Cheer­leader party porn

02. Pro­fes­sional machete

03. Wee les­bian pride week

04. Whit­ney Hous­ton cult

05. Nip­ple tickle torture

06. Spray but­ter addict

07. Lep­rechaun impersonators

08. Rod Stew­art Satan

09. YouTube Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey

10. From Amish to Hollywood

What If Wednesday?: Flushzilla App

 Apple, Essays, Humor, IPhone, Pop Culture, Technology, What If Wednesday?  2 Responses »
Oct 262011
 

One of the rea­sons that I decided to upgrade to the iPhone is the var­i­ous apps that are avail­able, espe­cially the ones that offer ways to be more pro­duc­tive and effi­cient.  That said, I’m amazed at the num­ber of apps that do–well, noth­ing, really.

There are apps that show vir­tual cig­a­rette lighters, that fill the screen of your phone with cyber beer, and one that com­pares how long you can hold your fin­ger against a computer-generated fin­ger­print against other own­ers of the app.

Then again, some use­less apps are just enter­tain­ing, like vir­tual bub­ble wrap.

Today, I thought it would be fun if there was an app that would ran­domly flush a toi­let some­where in Japan when you press a but­ton on the iPhone.  I have no idea where this idea came from, but I can see this elderly Japan­ese lady sweep­ing her house when she hears the toi­let flush by itself.  Her eyes grow big and she freezes, then slowly inches her way toward the bath­room, step by step, and peeks into the toi­let.  She assumes that it was her imag­i­na­tion, so she returns to her sweeping.

The but­ton on Flushzilla (my name for this app) is pressed once more, and the the toi­let flushes again.  This time the lady runs from the house for help.  Soon, the entire pop­u­la­tion of the lit­tle fish­ing vil­lage stands around  the bath­room, peer­ing into the toi­let that seems to have a life of its own, while on the other side of the planet a four-year-old amuses him­self with his mother’s iPhone while she dri­ves toward the gro­cery store.

What kind of use­less app do you think would be fun?