color me your caller, baby

the telephone and i have never been great friends. this is largely due to the fact that i am deaf as a post, and as such frequently spend large swaths of conversations asking people to repeat themselves. even in person, when i can read their facial expressions/body language/lips to try and orient myself within the conversation. it's ten times as bad when i'm separated from my conversation compatriate by the technological wall of the telephone.

this week, however, the phone has taken our relationship of low-level animosity just a little too far. i have been missing calls left right and center. it's getting obscene--my voice mail is getting significantly more action than i am. and charming as that function is, i feel, somehow, that i could use the attention to a slightly better return.

now, i suppose that this is all less to do with the phone than with my friends and family and their impeccable timing. i prefer to blame such things on technology, because otherwise it just gets to be too terrifyingly coincidental for a girl like me to assimilate. though i love me my coincidence, sometimes it just makes my head hurt.

examples: fulminous has the amazing ability to call me ONLY when i'm in a meeting (we're up to five calls that fall into this pattern and counting). roos only calls when i'm at kickboxing. rlf only seems to call when i'm out of the office for five minutes getting lunch. my father only calls when i'm on the subway. the ghost...the ghost just always manages to call when i'm not available to talk, and then i have to sit there and stare at my phone, blinking away at me, telling me i've a call i can't answer and i can't return, because he never leaves a phone number where i can reach him. it's most disheartening, actually. though it's definitely a good sign that he's calling. at last. for these small mercies are we grateful. and, at least if i keep missing the calls, i'm going my part to keep up with my moratorium on boys. if he wants me, he's going to have to read the rulebook and pursue me properly. because i've no patience left for having my heart or head stomped upon, and will not make any efforts to place myself in the path of that particular train until i'm given damn good reason to do so. but i digress.

anyway.

i guess that i really should start attempting to make amends with my phone. even though the entire reason i have a mobile is so that i am available at most times. because god knows i'm never home (with the exception of tonight, but that's a different story). so, i find it irksome when the convenience designed to make me accessible fails to do so entirely.

of course, it's not always bad that the timing triangle between me, my phone and my callers is a little strange. the boy from the subway, the one who had been sort of stalking me--i'm sure you remember? yeah. he called me the other day, just wanted to give me a heads up and presumably seek my authority to start up the whole cycle of constant telephoning again.

thank god i was on the subway when he called. the only evidence that he's wanting to reinsinuate himself into my life is a recorded message on my voicemail, retained for posterity, or at least fourteen days. he's getting no validation from me, thanks.

oh, and in an interesting and frustrating side note, he and the ghost share the same name. if that's not bizarre, and yet completely fitting within the scheme of my life, i don't rightly know what is.