Phone Fear and Fantasy*

I am not a phone person.

I'm not sure exactly when I became anti-phone, but my best guess puts it on the time line somewhere between begging my mother for my own line in the sixth grade so I could watch Melrose Place while "talking" to Elizabeth (not that we did any actual talking when the show was on) and the week I lost my cell phone behind the couch and couldn't have felt more free. (That last story involves wine and less-than-stellar-search-tactics, naturally.)

I also think the fact that I have trouble hearing on a cell phone has a lot to do with my phone phobia. My good Southern manners/laziness dictate that I won't ask anyone to repeat a phrase or question more than twice. And, since I often can't make out all of the words on two tries alone, I end up saying a lot of "Uh-huh, yeah, interesting" and hoping the person on the other end of the line didn't want specifics or details.

My fear of being judged is also a factor as I've been told by more than one person I can sound "like death" or "suicidal" on the phone. Some of this is my morning voice (which, like what I understand of morning sickness, is not necessarily relegated to the morning, but is most prevalent then). The morning voice is husky, gruff and best cured by Diet Coke. The rest of my incredibly morose phone voice turns into a form of the chicken/egg situation: Do I dislike the phone because I sound terrible on it or do I sound terrible because of how much I dislike talking on the phone?

Because of all this, I rarely talk on the phone. (E-mail all the way, baby!) And I have a tendency to do my fair share of call screening. If I don't know the number, I don't answer.

But, for some reason, phone numbers I don't know also have a tendency to fill me with unbridled hope. I think this strange burst of optimism/self-delusion dates back to my college days. When I saw a number I didn't recognize, I'd think "He finally called!" only to listen to the message and realize that yet another telemarketer wanted to sign me up for a Discover card.

And even though I'm not waiting on a boy to call these days, I still get the same feeling when numbers I don't know pop up on the caller id -- especially those with exotic and far-off area codes. When I saw three unidentified, out of area phone numbers on my cell last week, these were the actual thoughts that went through my mind: "Someone finally recognized my talent! Maybe it's a literary agent! Maybe it's a book publisher! Someone wants to talk to me about publishing!"

(Sure, I should know that it takes a lot of hard work to get a book publisher or agent, and they rarely fall out of the sky, but the impulse was there anyway.)

In reality, the calls came from my cell phone company and a real estate agent wondering about my now three-year-old interest in housing in Nashville, and I came face-to-face with cold, hard reality yet again. Sigh.

But, for me at least, hope springs eternal ... And should anyone with a 212 number that I don't recognize call -- telemarketer or president of Penguin Books -- I'm going to make sure there's no morning voice involved. 

*FYI: You don't know me at all if you think I would ever dare to name this post "Fone Fear and Fantasy."