6:45 a.m. - 2008-03-11
Answering Machine
Sometimes I'm absent-minded or distracted and punch in the wrong phone number. And when I do this, I always--always--get scared and hang up without saying anything to the person I just called. I mean, after all, we both know it was a wrong number, right? So why go through the embarrassment of admitting to a total stranger that I'm stupid?
So one day I called the wrong person, and this guy answered, whom I knew right away I didn't know at all, and following my usual panic algorithm, I said "Oh!" and hung up. And with SECONDS practically he calls me back and gets my answering machine--I never pick up owing to a chronic indecision problem possibly compounded by shyness--and leaves this long, nasty rant about what a stupid harmful person I am, playing phone pranks and messing with other people's lives and their privacy and so forth. And he talked untl the time limit was up. And I suppose I have Caller ID to blame for this.
Anyway, I kept his message on my answering machine for a while. And every now and then--like when there was nothing on TV--I'd play it back, listening for sound advice or insights into my character.
But finally I decided he was just a prick.

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