It used to be that I’d get phone calls from people who had mistakenly dialed the wrong number. We’d do that awkward verbal dance – I would ask them again who they were trying to reach and they’d play along, only to apologize once the error was clear and then abruptly hang up. I’d occasionally get someone rude, demanding to know my name instead as if I had had the audacity to have this number instead of it belonging to one of their friends.
I rarely get wrong number phone calls anymore. What I do get are text messages from people I don’t know. Fortunately, these are usually far more entertaining than wrong number calls. Here’s an example of a wrong number text message exchange I recently had:
As you can see, I first attempted to ignore the message, thinking that the wrong number would be recognized and I would be spared further messages without any action required on my part. However, this was not to be and I felt I had to respond to be clear that I was not the intended recipient of these texts.
I admit that I was puzzled by the question asked by my dear anonymous texter to explain what “You have the wrong number” means. How is that not clear? Did he (or she) think I meant that his own number was wrong in some way, that I was expecting a text from him from a different number? I was sorely tempted to ask him why my reply wasn’t understood, but I thought that would be tempting fate. What if he took that question as an insult to his intelligence – and he would be partially correct – and then attempted to call me to speak to me about said insult? Ye gods! Absolutely unacceptable. So, I replied more thoroughly and never received a response. I guess there’s no text messaging equivalent to the “abrupt apology and hang up” move. That’s okay, though – the entertainment value I got out of this outweighed the minor lack of courtesy endured and I can only imagine what kind of wrong number messages I’ll get when my iPhone can receive MMS messages with the 3.0 firmware release this summer. I’m sure more hilarity will ensue then.
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