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I
I have to fess up here... I’ve never liked phones one bit.
Telephone conversations make me extremely uneasy, I don’t think I’ve had a normal telephone conversation since...well...ever! One thing that bothers me is that you never know what that person is doing on their end of the phone. For all I know, they could be completely naked, greased up with margarine, while skinning a cat with a wooden spoon! So, I avoid using the phone at all costs, even though sometimes I’m forced to use it.
At this point in my life I consider telephone conversations to be a necessary evil of daily routine. Sure... I know I have to do it, but there is no way in hell I’m going to enjoy doing it! I’m the same way with shaking hands with people. I don’t want to have my hand against the flesh of another person that just used that hand to wipe his/her ass with only five minutes before meeting them. But to avoid looking like a complete jackass or a rude dick to the person. I just begrudgingly forge ahead and do it. Phones are the same way with me... I’ll do ANYTHING to avoid talking on the phone. A co-worker of mine recently told me that she WILLINGLY talked to a friend on the phone from 8pm to 4am! For me, that is truly a nightmarish vision of hell that hopefully I’ll never visit. I can’t even conceive the idea of talking on the phone for 8 hours like that. Hell, I can’t even THINK for 8 hours straight, much less talk. I would rather take a
ball-pen hammer and individually break every knuckle in my hand than go through that torment!
I have always hated calling people for the first time, I never know what to say to the person. I always will dial the first 6 numbers and then just sit there for a while before I press the last digit. Normally I’m just sitting there thinking, "exactly what the crap am I doing calling this person, and what the hell do I say to them?!?!?!" It’s about 50 MILLION times worse when it’s with talking to a person of the opposite sex that you might want to become romantically attached to. I always sound like a stammering
baboon on the phone in this situation, but when I’m talking with the female in person, I’m smoother than Billy Dee Williams and cooler than Steve McQueen, with no problems whatsoever.
Of course, when I do run into the misfortune of someone calling me, I’ll try various ways to immediately get off the phone. I normally do the "Hey there buckaroo, come on over!" or the "Howdy cowboy, I’ll come over there!" routines or I’ll just keep the conversation REAL short and to the point. I can deal with talking to people in person a hell of a lot easier than on the phone. At least I can look the person dead in the eyes and know exactly what they are thinking, instead of talking into a little piece of plastic and wire. If the person INSISTS on keeping me on the phone, my conversation rarely arises above, "uh-huh...yeah...ok." But, I have also found solace from dreaded telephone conversation with rise of the Internet and the wonderful program: the instant messenger.
Instant messenger gives me the freedom to talk to the person in "real time" without having to say a goddamned word to them! IM’ing gives the time to think out my responses without those awkward pauses that I detest so much in normal conversations. Not to mention, if I don’t feel like talking to them, I can just put up the "busy" flag or I can just simply forget their sorry asses! I tried using that method on the phone with some people. The last time Mr. Mockery called me, every time he would say something I would immediately respond with, "I’m sorry, I’m off flossing my gums, hold on and I’ll be right back!" It seems that he wouldn’t fall for my crafty ruse, proceeded to get pretty angry with me, and he kept calling me a "bastard" repeatedly. But it works just fine on the instant messenger! Granted, I don’t like the unknown sterility that surrounds being on instant messenger, but honestly I don’t know what they are doing. I won’t hear it or see it, so I don’t care! Ahh yes... ignorance is truly bliss.
I have fallen in love the instant messenger so much now, that I’ve gone to the point that I don’t even have long distance telephone service at my home! If someone out of town really needs to talk to me, they will have to get off their lazy asses and call me. Honestly, I wish I could be that Mob boss in the movie Goodfellas, who just drove around to everyone’s house to talk his friends, instead of talking to them on the phone. I don’t consider this man to be a kindred spirit, but as a ROLE MODEL! I know I’m not alone out there, I know there are plenty of people out there who feel my pain. People that also feel that cold chill of death creep up their spine when they hear that horrid death-ringing from the telephone. People, whose skin crawls when they hear that accursed phrase, "hey, give me a call tonight!" Hopefully the telephone will become obsolete one day and we can have those neat view-a-phones like the Jetsons had. But until those wonderful days come around, we must keep dealing with this horrid atrocity known as phones.
note: Killing Joke is actually Billy Dee Williams.
note #2: Actually, Killing joke is
more like Steve Urkel than anything. And Mr. Mockery only called
him on the phone cuz he didn't want to have to see Killing
Joke's ugly mug in person!
note #3: -RoG- would also
like to remind people that Protoclown has written a
rant
about phones before as well. Guess Killing Joke
is really struggling for new ideas these days... must be his old
age.
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