Nov 28 2003
107002936639459394
it’s the most wonderful time of the year…
or something.
so, today marks the beginning of the christmas season. (though commercially, the christmas season began sometime in mid-October. i think it gets earlier every year, and eventually the day after christmas will signal the time for all those wacky shoppers to start picking up little bits of this & that for everyone on their respective lists.) and since today is apparently the biggest shopping day of the year, i have decided to stay indoors and rearrange my bedroom furniture. i hate to shop. hate.
perhaps i will start writing out my christmas cards today, though. i have a vague goal of getting them in the mail sometime before december 23 this year. we’ll just see how that goes.
in other news, last night i was sitting on my living room couch, staring at the wall. i do that sometimes when i’m feeling a bit bewildered by my own boredom and i can’t decide what to do with myself. right. so, i was sitting there, across from the wall, staring at it, and my cell phone started ringing. i don’t know, it always shocks the hell out of me when my cell phone rings, because i generally keep it turned off. as such, it takes a couple of rings for me to figure out that yes, that is my phone ringing, and then i have to go through the fun game of trying to remember where i left it last. usually, the phone has stopped ringing by the time i find it, so i always have to call people back, like, “yeah, hi. couldn’t find my phone (because i’m a dumbass.)”
anyway, my mother was watching oklahoma! on pbs with the volume turned up to deafening, and my phone started ringing. i looked around me for it, because i remembered talking to someone the day before in the very room where i was, and discovered it wasn’t there. so i followed the sound, and it was on my kitchen counter. why? i don’t know. i don’t know why i do most of the things that i do. but it was still ringing when i found it, so i made a grab for it, picked it up, then hung up on whoever was calling me all within the space of a single second. i’m good.
right. so, usually, when i take a call, the phone makes a record of it so i can go back through my list and see who the last ten people who have called me were (because that’s amusing and necessary, i suppose). i guess this feature doesn’t work when my call lasts for a nanosecond because i hang up in the process of trying to bring the phone closer to my head so that i can say hello. there i was, standing in my kitchen and staring at the phone in my hand, saying “who are you?” but then i remembered that there aren’t that many people who have my number, because out of all the people i know, there are very few i want to actually call me. anyway, i devised a brilliant plan — i would call people and ask, “hey, did you just call me?” until i found my mystery caller.
it seemed simple enough. but two phone calls down my list (and of course, neither of them were the caller) i realized that this exercise was making me sound dumber than normal, because calling someone who most definitely hasn’t called you and asking, “hey, did you just call me?” comes across as a cheap excuse to call someone you don’t really have anything to say to, but you want to talk to anyway. and the thing about me is, i don’t ever call people just for the hell of it. i tend to view the telephone as a business tool, something used only for essential conversation like, “hey, can i come over and pick up that sweater you borrowed from me six months ago?” or “hey bitch, it’s $1.50 drink night over at blah blah blah… put some pants on and let’s go.” or “i’m sorry, he’s in a meeting right now. may i take a message?” that sort of thing.
so anyway… if you are my mystery caller: what the hell, yo? if you get unexpectedly disconnected, haven’t you ever heard of calling someone back? come on, where’s the love? christmas time is here, after all.
