Wednesday, January 20, 2010

It's a long distance call to my nextdoor neighbor.


I've lived in California for 2 1/2 years now and still haven't updated my cellphone number (or is it 'cell phonenumber', or maybe 'cell phone number'?).
My argument has always been that there are several people in the world that I know through school, etc who have my UT number and occasionally call me. It would be a pain to make sure everyone would get my new number and I'm sure I would forget someone.

Anyway, the last 6 months or so I have been getting a lot of wrong number calls from Utah. By 'a lot', I mean like one or two a week. It's usually teenagers (or maybe collage-age kids) looking for Tiffany. They seem to be genuine mistakes rather than ongoing prank calls, because once I say something like "This isn't Tiffany's phone", they simply reply:

"Uh... Sorry wrong number" and hang up.

My guess is either that Tiffany has a number similar to mine and has terrible penmanship so people misread her number (or possibly she quotes it wrong - I always find myself dylexifying the 6 and 7), or mine is a random number Tiffany gives as her own to people who she really doesn't want to hear from again.

What ever the reason, I've decided to start having fun with it.

This weekend I got a text from a UT number I didn't recognize. I could have ignored it, but I couldn't resist. Here's how the conversation went:

THEM: "Whats up?"
ME: "They found us out"
THEM: "What?"
ME: "I'm serious! U know what I mean!"

At this point they called me. I let it go to voice mail so they found out that they had a wrong number. Immediately afterward they texted back.

THEM: "Think u have a wrong number"
ME: "U texted me first. U must have a wrong number"
THEM: "Ya I do. But thats funny u sound like ur in trouble"
ME: "Ya, don't tell anyone k?"
THEM: "Uh dont even know you dude"

That was last I heard from them but a couple of hours later I got another text from a different number. I assume it was the first texter's friend texting me after hearing about the previous conversation.

THEM: "I Think they are on to us. What should we do?"
ME: "The chip is enroute. Stay away from the lab." - at this point It occured to me that if the government were secretly spying on text messages, this would look kinda suspicious. So to avoid any unnecessary homeland security involvement, I ended the message with "Beware the wildabeests."
THEM: "You are @%?! crazy"

That was the end of that.

This morning, however, I got a call from a completely different UT number. I answered the phone:

"Utah County Coroner's Office."

To which the caller replied: "Uh... Sorry wrong number" and hung up.

Way more satisfying!

So until (and if) I finally make the effort to change my phone number, if you call or text me and get an unusual response. I appologize. You apparently aren't important enough to be programed into my phone and therefore appear to be one of Tiffany's friends. Might I suggest contacting me via facebook (if I haven't "ignored" you there), maybe email. Or even via my blog.

On another note. Check out this link. If you type in your zipcode it will tell you which Star Wars planet your current weather most resembles.