CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

I asked that question of the woman I called last night at least a dozen times during our attempted phone conversation. I thought maybe the problem was with my cell so I called her back from my land line. Still, nothing but static, and me shouting, "Hello?...Can you hear me?" So I called again from my cell. It was the most frustrating phone conversation I've had since cell phones were the size of bricks, had antennas, and those purposeless strings attached to them. I felt like Alexander Graham Bell making that first phone call. I have Verizon, but even though I had my network behind me, this is how I felt trying to talk to this chick:

"Hello! Can you hear me now? I got your number from uh...Hello?!"

After the third time I called her back, I got her voicemail. I left a message asking her to call me. I even left her my email address, and asked her to email me in case her cell phone was having issues. I received neither a call nor an email. Maybe she never got the message, I thought. After all, if her cell phone was a mess, she probably wasn't getting voicemails.

I later spoke to my friend whose wife passed along this chick's digits to me in the first place because she thought we'd be a great match. When I told him what happened, his response was, "Yeah, she does that sometimes to guys."

"Does what?" I responded, "Pretends not to hear them on the phone and makes fake static noises?"

"No. She's just weird. Forget about it. Leslie has some other friends she can set you up with," he said.

"That's okay," I told him. "If this woman is at the top of the list of women she wants to set me up with, I'd hate to meet the members of the B-team."

"Don't be such a schmuck," he retorted angrily, as if he had any right to be annoyed. "It's not like you have that many options left."

"Hello?... I can't hear you so well," I said. "Are you driving through a tunnel?...We have a bad connection."

"Fuck you," was his response. "I'll call you tomorrow with another number."

And like a schmuck who doesn't have that many options left, I'll take the number and probably have something else to blog about.