On the inability to just be concise, unless you are Michael Stephens

or,

The mysterious and untimely death of my Cell Phone.

When I got my first cell phone, in 1999, for the first month every time I flipped it open to answer it I said, “Mulder,” instead of hello. A friend swore that after a while no one would ever call me ever, ever again.

Thankfully he was wrong. My cell is now the only phone number I have, has been for three years or so now. As of yesterday, I am on my 4th cell phone in 5 years. They wear out,they get outdated, I want one with new funky gadgets, whatever. I’ve never had one that inexplicably quit working however. This last one, which had been my favorite of the three, quit working out of nowhere. The repair guy at Sprint was honestly fascinated, he swore he’d never seen a phone malfunction quite the way mine was malfunctioning. The long and short of it is, I lost all 150 or so numbers in my electronic phone book.

So I sent out an email to everyone in my email address book, asking them to send me their numbers, if they still desired that I have them, or not if they didn’t.

None of my friends have the ability to be brief, except of course, the aforementioned ever stoic Mr. Mike Stephens, who sent my his full name, his address, and his telephone number, and if I had never met him in my life, without any attached comment whatsoever. Everyone else had something to say, something to add, and they almost all made me laugh. Some were almost as brief as Mike, replying only with,

“Rider,”

followed by the number. Most were thankful that I sent them the heads up, and I got many responses like,

“of course I need to be in your phone!!!!”

Most of those were from women, ‘cuz we know the ladies love Jefe. Speaking of which, I got one in Spanish,

“Ola El Jefe:

me es XXX-XX-XXXX

y ari es XXX-XX-XXXX

hasta luego,

miguel”

I didn’t know Micheal spoke Spanish, probably he’s just showing off. Others were clearly only looking out for themselves,

“What cell plan are you on? (blank) and I are now both on Cingular… just

wondering if you were too, then we’d

have free mobile-to-mobile minutes…”

Greedy bastards. Most left snide attempts at humor,

“you never call anyway” or

“Don’t pass it around or anything.”

And a few shared sympathy and similar experiences, like,

“I feel your pain.I went through the tragic death of my cell phone through a

messy boating accident a few months ago.”

and my personal favorite extreme phone death story,

“i know what you’re going through. my cell phone was rudely ripped from my

pants pocket last month by the centripetal force of a ride at the state

fair. went whizzing out of my pocket and almost plugged an old guy in the

face. instead, it smashed into a concrete block and dissolved to bits.”

And although I think this person might be seriously upset with me (and I most likely deserve it),

“not sure if you’re ever going to speak to me again but here, knock yourself out”‘

I’m pretty sure these people were just joking,

“And, uh, oh yeah…go to hell or whatever.” and,

“Go to hell, cocksucker motherfucker!

:)”

So, If I used to have your number and you think I still should, If I never had your number and you want me to (Hello, Ladies) or if you would like to sell me something, comment or email it to me. Or just cuss me out, whatever seems best.