They Can't All Be Creepers

I always feel bad when I get a phone call and it’s the wrong number.  It always goes like this:

“Hello?”

“Hi, is so-and-so there?”

“Nope.  You got the wrong number.”

At that point, the other person always says in horror, “Oh… I’m so sorry.” 

I try to tell them, “It’s okay, no worries,” but I feel like if this exchange was in person the other person would be running away crying in embarrassment at this point.  

It’s not that big of a deal.  Just because I don’t know you doesn’t mean I’m down for a random conversation.  Makes no difference to me.  I’ll talk to anyone as long as they’re interested in talking to me.  I don’t care.  If you’re next to me on an airplane, I’ll fire up a conversation.  It feels far less uncomfortable than to deliberately ignore the person for three hours.  Tonya calls them my “single-serving friends.”

Now, I know it feels invasive and eerie if you have no idea who that person is, especially if it’s a disembodied voice.  Thanks, horror films, for making that a problem.  But really, how’s it any different than being at some mass grouping, like a church reception, wedding reception, walk for cancer, and striking a conversation up with the weirdo beside you?  You don’t know who they are.  And now they know who you are, and what you look like.  They can follow you, get you alone and, and, and… At least with a phone you can hang up!

Thanks to advances it telecommunications, we now get texts from wrong numbers instead…well, other people do.  I never do.  Somehow texts creep people out even more than phone calls, probably because you can’t hang up.  That message sits there, staring at you, waiting, expecting a response.  A lot of times the message is really casual, like they know you.  The relaxed nature of what they say makes it seem like they know more about you than you’re comfortable with.  In reality, all they know about you is seven digits and an area code.  Oh know, they have your number!  And its you’re cell phone.  That means you could be ANYWHERE.  They could have found you.  They could be looking at you now…

Come on, people.  I don’t remember anyone being quite as unnerved that someone discovered you and your AOL screen name, which was probably something stupid like, WonderWeasel69.  Everyone knew it was just some random person who randomly found you and wanted to make friends with whoever the hell they managed to make contact with.

I think urbanization and growing population has caused us to fight off our natural instinct as social beings.  We self-propagate a level of anonymity by first not having to time of day for people we don’t know. That in turn creates a shroud of mystery around everyone we don’t know that we then fear.  We do this to ourselves.

When World War III happens and the planet is obliterated, the only working technology will be ham radio.  Survivors will rotate frequencies in hopes that someone is still out there and can hear them.  I bet that when someone out there hears that transmission, they’ll turn their radio off and work themselves up about who that person was, and how they found them.