Technology can be fickle. Take cell phones. While this little gizmo has "freed us from our homes," in truth, they create leashes. We are never alone unless the phone is off, or out of range, and even then the thought of missing an important call throws us into a panic. The black books and date books have been replaced by contact lists and digital calendars. Our text messages become our modes of vital communications - including the all-important break up message (Its not U, its Me). And every person now has their own personal assistant, taking messages for us when we don't know who's calling or don't want to talk to whomever has the time to speed dial our number.
But what happens when you receive a text message from a mystery person? Usually, you ignore it, but sometimes you just play right along.
A friend called me the other night. For her, the evening began with a random text message. The message itself was commonplace, but my friend - we'll call her Annie - decided to play along with the game.
Annie had called me wondering if I knew the number and, in turn, the person with whom she was texting. Unfortunately - or rather fortunately for the story that transpired - I did not. I tried looking up my numbers in my phone. I reverse-checked the number on a few websites. I even did a google search in the vain attempt at finding someone foolish enough to publicize their cell phone number (which this obviously was since Annie was texting with the person).
The messages the two had already exchanged revealed very little. Actually, we could only determine the person was male when he commented that he was trying to understand women - and what guy isn't?
My original suggestion of calling the person from my phone, to a number in another state, and listen for the voice mail and figure out the person's name did not go well.
"What if he answers?" Annie asked. Well, I would just ask for someone who obviously isn't there and apologize for dialing the wrong number. Needless to say we didn't take this approach.
There were attempts to find out more information. Annie asked how Christmas and New Year's went, only to find out New Year's was busy and Christmas was awkward with his sister bringing her boyfriend and the mystery man getting a guitar from the parents. So we could only narrow it down to guys with sisters and not musically inclined.
I had her ask about the guy's work, only to find out that work is slow. Still no clues here. This is when I brought up finding out directly through my original plan.
"But what if he's a guy I used to date and want to date him again?" she replied. How the two correlate, I have yet to figure out.
Granted, all of this could've been prevented if Annie used her cunning mind at the beginning of our scenario and asked who the person was straightforward. Most people do this, or ignore the text, when confronted with a number and no name. It's not rude, since the number is obviously not one we have used before. But, no. My friend didn't start thinking of asking our mystery person until later in the game. Each time, however, I had to remind her that it would not be wise to bluntly ask for his name since it would reveal holding a, now, lengthy conversation with someone we did not know.
As an alternative, however, I decided we should have Annie feign a bad phone, asking our John Doe to call her. She wouldn't answer the phone in this situation, so we'd either have a voice clue or he would provide his name. Granted, by this point, normal people would've given up and admitted to having no clue who was on the other end. But we are not normal. Nor was there a point of giving up. It was late at night and the mystery was puzzling.
Before we were able to enact our brilliant plan, Mystery X had asked about my friend's Christmas. When she responded her holiday's similarities to A Christmas Story, his response shed new light into the game. The man does not like the movie, and why should he? I think the movie is horrible, and could go into great detail about it's failures as a glimpse into Americana Christmas.
After a brief debate regarding this new information Operation: Lampshade (not my name) was enacted. Shortly after sending the message, Annie's phone was beeping in to another call, indicating that our ruse was working. It was only a matter of time before we could unmasked our friend.
Now, typically when a person dials a number to test out a phone's ability to receive incoming calls they will do one of two things. Either they will reach the person who's phone is in questions or they will leave a message providing evidence of the failed attempt. When you deal with our unknown entity you get a third option: no message. What can we do next? Do we call his bluff in not leaving a message, thus revealing the phone did work and we chose not to answer it for ulterior motives? No, we come up with a new plan.
When receiving the text confirming that our plan failed, it was time to establish a new method to our madness. We would reply back that Annie would check her voicemail to see if she could at least receive a message. When he responds that he didn't leave a message, we would then tell him to hold on. A few moments later, we would send another text message asking to call again since we have now reset our towers. Granted, by this point it has become absolutely apparent that we are losing our minds. But, we trudged on because, as Annie put it, "At this point, I'm addicted to the game."
At what point did this become a game? After having lived through it, I'm still unsure how we went from trying to figure out who this person was to trying to come up with the most creative ways to discover his identity. Even the cell phone towers wasn't the most interesting. At one point, my friend actually said she was going to stop by some pay phone on her way to work the next morning, call the number up and listen for the guy's answer. She would keep silent, but listen to figure out the person's identity.
We didn't get this far in the game, however. At some point in the chaos, Annie took an educated guess into who this might be and texted a possible mutual friend. When that person didn't respond, she started second guessing herself. But, before we enacted the continuation of our psychosis, I suggested she send a text saying "Wait, I thought I was talking to X," and see what would happen. Indeed, it turned out her guess was right and the mystery person now had a name. Of course, I still have no idea who this guy was, but it was entertaining to play along.
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