My friend Angela is driving me crazy. Every day she expects me to
text message her with an exciting new
fact about the
world in which we live. So I come up with stuff like:
Some termites when under attack can make themselves explode, spraying their gooey insides over their attackers to incapacitate them.
Luis de Camoes was the greatest Portuguese Renaissance poet. He wrote The Lusiad, an epic poem describing the entire history of Portugal, and in particular Vasco da Gama's epic voyage around the coast of Africa to India.
When you flush the toilet it sends a fine spray of germs and viruses into the air. They remain airborne for up to 2 hours. Hide your toothbrush.
But That Is Not Enough. A few days ago she phoned me at work to give me her new email address and demand I send her some dirty jokes. I started explaining to her that I really didn't know any good dirty jokes, or even much in the way of bad ones, and then I remembered I was at work and 10 colleagues were in the same room, none of whom needed to hear contextless punchlines about leprechauns. Nonetheless, that very evening I despatched a package of semen-soaked funnies.
Then last night she texts me to complain she hasn't got any dirty jokes yet. We spend the duration of EastEnders exchanging messages, and establish that the very many mails I sent have vanished thanks to the uselessness of Yahoo Mail. I promise to try again today. I sent her more jokes today, some with sexy bits, and requested she reply. She has not.
The only thanks I get for any of this is her texting me to say "Ha ha you're so crazy. Where are the dirty jokes?" It is clear that if I was to provide regular shipments of gold-plated pizzas to her door with diamond-encrusted anchovies on top she would demand why I hadn't sent any platinum olives. Whenever I suggest she phones me, joins me for a friendly game of Texas Hold 'Em or buys me beer or motor-cars, she laughs and says "Ha ha you're so crazy." I am not crazy. I am a DSP engineer. I read ISO standards for a living.
The worst of it is I don't mind sending her stuff. I know at some time I will stop texting her a useful fact every day, because one of us will be dead. Or I will lose my phone again and when I call my number to find it a nice policeman will not reply. I don't know what today's fact will be. But it will not be "Ha ha From now on I'm only doing shit for you on a quid pro quo basis. Every word you send will be counted."