As anyone who is fortunate enough to have both my cell phone number and a basic grasp of our numerical system will tell you, it is not that hard to successfully press the series of digits that leads to me. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that it is also not hard to accidentally press my unique cell phone number. I get an inordinate number of wrong numbers, especially for a cell phone. A gentleman we’ll call ‘James’ – because that’s who everyone asks for when they call my phone looking for him – has a gaggle of easily confused, stubby-fingered friends who keep trekking through the ethereal net of telephone connections, making wrong turns at Albuquerque and ending up at my dial tone. Lucky me. During a recent bout of wrong numbers, I decided to conduct a little experiment in patience. No humans were harmed during the course of this experiment. Mildly annoyed and inconvenienced, yes. Hurt? Unfortunately, no.
One night, around 11.30, my phone rang. While this experience is ordinarily a joyous affirmation of my own popularity, this time something was different. My phone began beeping the particular sequence I’ve set to indicate that someone is calling me to talk to not me. I checked the display and sure enough, it was a number I’d never seen before. Great.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” a girl chirruped. “Is James there?”
“Sure, just let me find him.” Speakerphone: on. Mute: on. Phone on desk. This girl – let’s call her Janell, because I’ve never met a Janell I’ve liked – had someone else on three-way calling, which may skew the results of this study. She waited patiently for a while, chatting quietly with her pal about such erudite topics as ‘what James has done now’ and ‘whether or not this will work to gauge my lip piercing.’ I never found out what she was trying to use, and it haunts me to this day. I sat enthralled, and also watching TV and chatting online, so I use the term ‘enthralled’ rather loosely, for a full six minutes. After a brief discussion about ‘where the hell James was’ in which no clear conclusion was reached, they decided to give and then hang up.
“Surely,” I thought, “Janell will check the number, realize her mistake and redial correctly. And then my fun will be over.” I needn’t have worried. Pressing ‘send’ is way easier than pressing seven tiny, numbered buttons in the correct sequence. Janell and I shared the exact same greeting, and then it was speakerphone-mute-experiment time. This eavesdropping session was much more informative. Apparently, there was some sort of illicit love triangle action going on between Janell, James and, for the sake of pointless alliteration and capricious confusion, the gent on three-way I have dubbed Jamal. They continued their hushed, stilted conversation, no doubt wary of James picking up at any second. Fools. It seems that although Janell was currently involved with James, she was more interested in a liaison with young Jamal. The three-way call was the method they had chosen to confront the situation and make known the fervent desires of their young, lustful hearts. I was clearly standing in the way of true love with this experiment. Their raging libidos would only allow them a tense four-minute wait, and after Janell hung up, I have not heard from them since. So for all the hopeless romantics out there on pins and needles about Janell and Jamal’s future… I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sure they’ll end up happily ever after for at least a week or two.
A few nights later, I was given the chance to further my research. A gent we’ll call Samuel for reasons that will become clear later happened upon my number late one night. James is, apparently, nocturnal. Luckily for the boundless pursuit of scientific knowledge, so am I. He asked for the big J, and I proceeded with the same greeting as Janell to ensure scientific consistency. After an initial wait of four minutes, I sought the expertise of my sister scientist Laura. Samuel was staying on the line obligingly enough with nary a complaint, but boredom was beginning to set in on my end. I decided to add a new variable. ‘New variable’ being fancy-talk for ‘mashed a bunch of buttons to check for his response.’
“Hello? Hello? James?” Sam replied quickly, taking the beeps as a sign that James was indeed on the line. I beeped (bept?) indiscriminately.
“This is like talking to a computer,” he said. I beeped in response. “Was that a one or a zero?” he asked. “Are we talking in binary?” I beeped twice; clearly an attempt to convey my conviction that ‘binary’ was an awfully big word for someone who can’t press seven numbers in the correct order. Sam had a good laugh at the mere idea, I assume, of our half-beep, half-moron conversation. I beeped rapidly, several times in a row. He took this as an expression of sass.
“Don’t you take that tone with me,” he joked, making what I’m sure was an accidentally clever play on words. I beeped an SOS in Morse code, for lack of anything else to say. Sam laughed again. James had better hope that he’s never in a life or death situation where the only person he can contact is Sam and he is compromised in such a way that he cannot speak and must attempt to beep for help. God forbid, etc etc. ‘Cuz I totally blew any chance of that being at all effective. In any case, I have a feeling any call to Sam would be unavoidably doomed by dumb from the start.
Anyway, back at the ranch, Samuel had designated one beep to signify yes, while two beeps was a negative response. Sam was also clearly pissed at James – seriously, this guy must be a real ass – and was demanding an explanation of why they had not met up earlier that evening.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he demanded. This was an unwelcome deviation from our yes/no question scheme that left me unable to respond accurately. I beeped three times, hoping he’d get confused and move on. It worked. “Do you want me to come over there?” Shut. Up. This kid was starting shit I could only have dreamed of starting – with me practically an innocent bystander. Okay, not at all innocent. But this? Was going to be awesome. Start it up.
BEEP.
“Because I have the car tonight. So I’ll come over.” I love this so much.
BEEP!
“Is Tyler over there?” Sure. Why not drag his ass into this?
BEEP.
“Okay. I’ll be over there in a little bit.” So trusting, this kid. Never disbelieved fake-James and his beeps for a second. I beeped a goodbye and we were parted by dead air. I felt pangs of disappointment. Would I find out how this charade I had set in motion would end? Only time would tell.
Thirty seconds worth of time, as it turned out. Sam called back to verify that James really wanted him over there. I beeped an affirmative and we were on our way. Again.
The next call from Sam evidently came from James’ front porch.
“Dude, let me in.”
BEEP BEEP. At this, Sam became quite irate, spouting all sorts of obscenities at James. Heh. Short fuse. There was a scuffle, and suddenly Sam was talking to some new people. He was inside and looking for James and Tyler. Sweet. Somehow, possibly with liberal amounts of help from yours truly, he got the impression that James and Tyler were hiding somewhere in the house. He stayed in the kitchen, though, trying to amaze whoever was in there with his beeping buddy. Predictably, no one was amazed. I could hear him rummaging around for a while, and then the phone went dead. Uh-oh.
He called back fifteen minutes later, but did not say anything when I picked up. After a few seconds’ silence, he beeped once, loud and angry, if I may presume emotion and intent from his beeping technique. I didn’t respond. No dice, buddy. I’m the beeper in this relationship. A few more seconds of silence were all he could take.
“Look, that was a really crappy joke to play.” He sounded really pissed.
“I don’t know why you would do that. It was really mean.” I stayed silent, an admission of guilt as much as an inability to express “you are an idiot who brought this upon yourself” through our simplistic communication structure. He hung up without another word. I guess we’re not friends anymore. But on the up side, I haven’t gotten any wrong numbers since the termination of this experiment.
IRRESPONSIBLY GENERALIZED RESULTS OF EXPERIMENT: The average (and this is a total guess on age) late-middle to early-high schooler tends to believe you when you tell them the person they want to talk to is coming to the line. These individuals are also extremely open to alternative forms of communication. They are dumb. I am mean. End of study.
