I was talking with a friend the other day about a phone she had made to a Sony help hotline.
Turns out that not only had she gotten her answer to her question but also had exchanged ICQ
numbers with the person on the other end. I commented that it must have been one hell of
conversation for that to have come about.
It reminded me of the strangest set of phone calls I've ever had. A few years ago I was living in
Phoenix when I started receiving phone calls from a man who was living in London. (or so he
said) I was new to the area and didn't receive very many phone calls so I suppose that is partly
why I didn't just hang up on him the first time. I have no idea what the truth of the situation was
nor will I ever I imagine, but the tale he told me was fascinating to say the least.
The first time he called he said he was calling from a radio station and wanted to interview me.
His story was that he would call a number at random and put the interview on the air. The show
was about people, how we react to strange occurrences, how we're all pretty much alike. blah
blah blah So anyway I agreed to talk to him, even though I found the questions to be a bit odd, I
was having fun being totally honest with a complete stranger. We probably talked for an hour
and a half the first time. I never dreamed he'd call back.
All in all we probably talked about ten times on the phone with him always being the one footing
the bill. All of the phone calls after the initial one he was off work and usually fairly drunk
which was fine because so was I. We had great conversations about just about anything and
everything. I really did enjoy talking to the man (I think his name was Rob) he was a good
conversationalist and his accent was sexy to listen to. He told me some of the wildest stories
that I've ever heard and called them his own life.
There was the Princess whom he'd been a body guard for that had fallen deeply in love with
him. He'd loved her too but because of the social setting both of their lives would have been in
danger had they followed their hearts. Then there was his conspiracy theory, information he
supposedly had that had some secret agency tapping all his phone calls to make sure he wasn't
divulging any of it. He'd hinted it was about aliens... and that's why sometimes he'd suddenly
hangup the phone then call back later. His stories were detailed and fun to listen to even if I didn't
believe a word of them to be true.
Eventually though I had to ask him to please stop calling me, which made me sad. I'd had fun
talking and listening to this strange man, had considered him an odd sort of friend. When he
decided that he was "in love" with me and had to meet me after less then a dozen phone calls,
no matter that I was married and he had known that from the first phone call. I was also mad
that he'd decided to ignore the ground rules we'd set that no matter what this was simply for
fun, not to be taken seriously and that we were not ever going to have a relationship beyond
being friends. He kept calling anyway, which made my husband jealous (which made me
happy, but that's another story). My husband and I ended up moving within a few months and
our phone number changed so I never heard from him again.
*the rest of this write up has been deleted in order to make this more E2 friendly*