Gibberings
Dad told me never to use XTREE when he wasn’t in the room.
November 21, 2008 ~ 10:41:05 AM * -08:00ST
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Log # 138
Caller IQ
My cell number is in the Chicago area code. Primarily because my nighttime minutes start three hours earlier than other west coasters, but also because I was simply in the area when I opened the account.
People usually do not take me seriously when I speak about the ignorant rabble that infests the otherwise fascinating and artful city of Chicago. But having recently seen Idiocracy and being haunted by the similarity of the future-stupids to modern Chicagoans, I will elucidate.
Since starting this phoneline, I have received three to five calls a week from the Windy City. A typical one goes like this:
My phone rings. I do not recognize the number, but know it is from Chicago by the area code.
ME
Hello?
CALLER
(silence, perhaps some mouthbreathing, slurping, or chewing)
ME
Hello?!
CALLER
Hello?
ME
Yes, who is this?
CALLER
Pam?
ME
What?
CALLER
Uh, is Pam there.
CALLER
Huh?
ME
The wrong number. There is no Pam at this number.
CALLER
Uh. For real?
ME
Yes. Goodbye.
I hang up. Thirty seconds later, the phone rings again. Same number.
ME
Hello?
CALLER
(silence)
They hang up.
This is the call I got tonight. The vary slightly, my favorites being the ones in which the urban accent is so strong, the mouth so muffled by rolls of corn-fed midwestern blubber, that I literally cannot understand what the other person is saying. Those calls escalate to shouting matches, similar to the ones that occur between fun-loving American tourists and exasperated ethnic shopkeepers in summer vacation caper movies.
What puzzles me most, is the utter lack of response to my initial “Hello?”. I have never encountered this before. Phone calls–the phone calls I have participated in up until acquiring this phone–open with a universal and linear script:
A. Ring
B. Hello?
C. This is (name of person) and I (am looking for, am calling about, would like to know) (object of phone call).
D. The conversation starts, based on C.
Cell phones modify this script only if the person calling is in your address book, in which case you can skip ahead:
A. Ring.
B. Hey (name of person), what’s up?
C. The conversations starts.
Efficient. Practical. Polite. Universally understandable. It’s the grammar of conversation. Why the silence following my obviously curious “Hello”? Why the complete lack of response to an inquiry about the identity of the caller? Why attempt to continue the call after being informed of a wrong number?
My word isn’t good enough for them, I suppose. Pam must be here, somewhere, just out of reach. I am lying, or perhaps stupid, and she is definitely here. Their fingers stabbed true, their identity and intent is blazingly obvious to all they reach out to, and they owe me nothing. I am the asshole. They just have to ask a few more times, and Pam will appear.
by
Eliza Gauger on February 13th, 2007 ~ 01:47:25 AM
Slotted into Depressing, Future, Hate |
1 Comment »
Comment by morado on
February 15, 2007 at 4:57 am
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you should see the ones who come to paris just to yell in restaurants and other public spaces. “R”s that can make tremble a whole wine bottle to the ground.
