For about 6 years, I had the same phone number. No one ever called me and it was awesome. When I moved out of Orlando I decided that, along with the box spring that I kind of illegally disposed of in the dumpster of my apartment complex, I’d also leave behind my old phone number. My new Portland area code worked well for a few weeks, especially because I was finally rid of the bill collectors who would call looking for my ex, who was considerate enough to pass along my contact information as his own.
But I slowly realized that the person who had my number before me did their best to collect the most illiterate friends in the Pacific Northwest, which is actually hard to do because it’s all Yerba Mate this and sustainable agriculture that. It seemed that every week, I was getting a call from someone mumbling about something I figured had to do with either that hilarious new song, “I’m On A Boat” or Free Slurpee Day at 7-Eleven. At best, I was only passively interested in the latter, so I’d politely tell them that they had the wrong number and they would hurriedly hang up on me as if I were their parole officer.
Texts were much harder to come by. The only one I received, aside from the magnum opus below, was one stating, ‘I want u’ and I knew that wasn’t for me so I didn’t even bother responding. But once I got two texts from the same number, I finally felt compelled to say something with the hope that this person would relay the message to the remaining network of recreational cough syrup abusers.
In this exchange, I play the part of unnecessarily verbose asshole:
In hindsight, I feel lame for doing it. But I was hopped up on three cups of green tea and ultimately, I’m lucky that it kept me distracted long enough to prevent me from cutting my own bangs or buying discount art supplies. I did find time to research what a “marebear” is and, aside from someone who can’t take a fucking hint, Urban Dictionary informs me that it’s, “an extremely cute but rare creature that duels in san diego but can also be found in mississippi.”
So yeah, I have to change my number again.
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When I moved about 3 years ago, even though it was a very short distance and could have easily kept the same landline phone number, I decided to get a new one. I just give that to some businesses; the friends have my cell number.
Within a week, I was getting collection calls for “Mary Sweeney”. Eh, aren’t these numbers supposed to be left “fallow” for a while…? Most of them went to voicemail. I even took the effort to call some back and tell them don’t know her, this is my number, WTF? Eventually gave up. May still be getting some. Amongst the telemarketing calls (which fortunately have 1-8xx numbers easy to ignore).
Now I’m thinking I should have been more…creative.
Every marebear dreams of quitting soccer to join a barbershop quartet. I’m surprised there isn’t a Paul Simon song about it, listing 50 ways you can do that.