I am not too happy using the telephone. Don’t get me wrong; I own a mobile phone and love my little piece of technological magic rather more than I really should do. I just don’t use it as a phone; on a daily basis it is my access to the internet, it is my pager, it is my calendar and my calculator. It is my invaluable notepad, my secretary and my personal organiser. Held beneath its hallowed yet badly scratched exterior is my life and my memory and I am well aware that I need it if I am to function on a daily basis.
Strangely however, I rarely use it as a phone, so when I am asked to “phone someone you wouldn’t normally call”, it could easily mean any of my friends as I do not normally call anybody.
It is obvious therefore that I need to look further a field to ensure I fulfil this challenge as I cannot easily distinguish between which of my friends I would and would not normally call.
I needed to ring an absolute stranger.
But how to ensure I speak to a complete stranger? Fortunately, as luck would have it, I just so happen to be a geek and this meant I just so happened to have the answer to my dilemma. Dice!
Picking up a handful, I rolled them until I had the requisite amount of numbers for a phone number and dialled it. The line did not exist. Undeterred I rolled again. The line did not exist. Once again I rolled again. The Line, once again, did not exist. This may not have been the perfect plan I felt it might be. I took one of my 10 sided beauties away and assumed the first number should be a “0″ then rolled again. The line; the line did not exist. I rang a second time and the line did not, as before, exist. Then a third time and once again, a swing and a miss!
So I took away another dice and assumed the first 2 numbers would be “01″, limiting contact to it land lines, but giving us a pretty good chance of us getting a number that rung.
The next 8 rolls did there very best to prove us wrong, but as I rang for the ninth time after dejectedly throwing the dice across the table, the long monotone drone of a nonexistent line was replaced by the bright cheery ring of a connection. It worked! On the other end of the line was a complete and utter stranger. I waited for them to pick up, eager to brighten their day with words of good natured positivity.
No Answer.
Crap.
I kept rolling, the next 16 rolls came up with unconnected lines. On the seventeenth call, we once again heard the cheery buzz of a ringing phone. This could be it. The phone was answered by a gentleman. That, sadly, is all the information I have.
Answerer: “Hello?”
Mikey: “Hello this is Mikey! I just wanted to say how lovely you are”
Answerer: “Sorry? Who is it calling?”
Mikey: “It’s Mikey! I just wanted to say how lovely you are.”
Answerer: “I’m sorry, who is it you want to speak to?”
Mikey: “You! I’m just ringing to tell you how lovely you are. You’re lovely!”
Answerer: Um, thanks.
Mikey: You’re welcome!
Answerer: Bye
Sadly before I could cheerily tell them goodbye, they had gone, but I am utterly certain that there like was improved by my call. If only them going away happy that they are “Not as weird as that freak!”
Either way, it was a hoot; I highly recommend you confuse the living hell out of some random person. I would probably suggest that you find a better way of randomly finding a random person, but other than that. Brilliant fun!
Actually, I had another go. This time it took just 5 rolls to get a ringing tone, but another 21 rolls to get one that connected thought to another human being. Sadly it turned out of to be an answer-phone. I left a message regardless.
“Hello! This is Mikey. I’m just calling to tell you how lovely you are! You are lovely! Everybody thinks so!”
Hopefully they’ll enjoy that.
