My friend Liz has a cell phone. I always refer to it as the “bat phone”… mainly because it’s like the bat cave… secretive and hidden. The number, that is, not the phone. See, she got it to call her husband and did not want to release the number to anyone other than him so that when it rang, she would always know who was calling her. Ok, that is romantic and sappy and cute… Anyway, I have always been pretending to try and “find out the number” and joking that I know it. Well, for some reason today – after almost a year… Liz slipped. She called my cell phone with “the bat phone.” And guess what … my phone has caller ID. Uh oh… Joshua now has the elusive number! So the question is, what do i do? I haven’t memorized it or even looked at it since it rang through this morning. Do I erase it and let them continue their romantic game… or do I keep save it for the day that I really need to get ahold of them? (Liz’s husband, Dave, apparently has no concept of the mobile phone – for some odd reason he keeps his in his office almost 24/7. It does me no good there.) Thoughts, opinions?
Since I’m so talkative here lately, I’ll weigh in.
I emphasize with Liz quite a bit. I have an e-mail address (not my gmail) that I only give to select people. I’m pretty protective about it, because all I need is for one Josh Petrillo to get me on a list and BAM! So much for zero spam…
So no matter what you think about the protective habits of Robin—er… Liz—she might be onto something. Don’t blame her one bit.
The big thing for my mobile is setting a specific ring for a person. Everyone who calls me gets one ring, while for Rebecca I have reserved a specific tune from U2. So everytime the phone rings and I hear the intro to “Beautiful Day”, I know it’s her.
I say leak the # on the internet(s). Don’t be an enabler! No, wait… I take that back.
If she is really concerned, or if the # ever gets leaked, Liz can probably set her cell phone to only accept calls from people on a list, and only put Dave on the list. So it’s not even about ignoring you; she can nuke your incoming calls without so much as lifting a finger.
Go Liz! Privacy in today’s world is hard. 20 years ago, the most elite people in society were the ones who could be reached anywhere, anytime (with big brick-like cell phones). Now, the mark of the elite is to be unreachable. Funny how things change.
BTW, 20 years ago, I was 4.
Erase the number so your concious is clean. Then, when you need to get a hold of her, call me, then I’ll call her and tell her to call you using *67.
corey stark says keep it for emergencies and just to randomly call her… he found it out way back at the beginning, so as far as i know he’s the only one who has it other than dave… although it sounds abit like eric might have an inkling…
I say, keep it. You never know when you may be bored in the middle of the night….
Just call it from random pay phones and other phones that cannot be traced back to you. Then if she asks you if you know what’s going on, you can say, “When did they call?” Then when she tells you, you can say, “No, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I did see some greasy guy on the pay phone around that time.”
Messing with people is fun.