Absolutely Zero Con-Text

, , , , , , | Friendly | April 9, 2019

I’m sitting at home on my computer when a text comes in from a random number. It just says, “Be A Man. Call me back.” I figure the spammers are trying out ways to get people to call them instead of vice versa, so I ignore it.

Fifteen minutes later, I get a call from a vaguely familiar number that turns out to be the same one that sent the text. A woman’s voice I don’t recognize, but which seems a bit antagonistic, asks, “Who is this?” Somewhat confused, I give my first name. She doesn’t seem to believe me and gets more agitated. She keeps asking who I am, and gets more and more upset as I tell her, basically, that I’m a middle-aged man who has no idea who she is or who her son is. Suspecting I’m talking with a crazy person due to how aggressive and upset she is, I don’t give out any specific details. She then segues into, “How do you think I got this number?” I have no idea and say so. “This showed up on my son’s phone. How did it get there?” Again, I have no idea.

She doesn’t believe me, starts ranting at me to leave her son alone, and gets quite worked up. I’m usually upset by confrontational situations, but I surprise myself by staying calm. She obviously made a mistake and is now yelling into the phone loud enough to make me pull it away from my ear, but this has nothing to do with me. My calm only makes her more agitated, since I’m not “taking her seriously.” Eventually, she slows down and ends with a short segment with the theme of, “I better not see your number on my son’s phone again!” I figure that is easy for me to agree to since I have no idea what her son’s phone number is. She then hangs up.

Five minutes later, a text from the same number: “I am SO SORRY! I mixed up your phone number with a punk kid my son has been hanging out with. I am only doing my best as a mom and sorry to bother you.”

Those two sentences explain more about the situation than all the ranting she did over the phone. To be polite, I reply, “That’s okay. Hope you can resolve your situation.” She replies, “Thank you. Sorry again,” and that is the last I hear from that phone number.  

I do hope she resolved the situation, but ten minutes of yelling and a lot of vocal cord stress could’ve been avoided if she’d double checked the number, or actually listened to me when I said I didn’t know who she or her son was.

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