Saturday, July 08, 2006

Electronic Hug


I'm not a very important person, so when I came back from the holiday and found that I had three voice mail messages on my work phone, I was a bit surprised. Nobody calls me. So I fumble around making attempts to log into my mailbox with the little passcode I can never punch in correctly the first time. Eventually, an oddly robotic voice starts talking at me. "That's weird," I'm thinking, "my voice mail doesn't normally sound like that. What's this garbled little machine saying to me?"
"garble, garble, Sprint Text to Landline, garble, garble... This is an Electronic Hug from [insert phone number] to let you know that someone cares about you..."

Huh?

And I got three of them. All from the same number. Well, actually, at least the first two were - I was too distracted to pay any attention to the third. I don't recognize the number, and it doesn't magically appear in my cell phone. My work number isn't published, so a person would have to really work to get it. It must be a wrong number. Or some creepy stalker. Hey, I work with the public. Stalkers are NOT out of the question. If you smile at the questionable camouflage guy, he might just follow you around too much. Anyway, I do the 'ole reverse number lookup thingy, which solves nothing, what with cells not being in the white pages. Sigh. "How much self-confidence do I have today?" I ask myself. Enough to call a stranger's phone number? Yep.

Dial. Weird dead space sound of connection. Hey, cool, s/he's got Jack Johnson on ringback!

Guy: Hello?
Me: Who's this?
Guy: This is Noah

*Pause - I so don't know any Noahs *

Me: Um, yeah. So I got an Electronic Hug from this number. It said it was from someone letting me know that they care.
Noah: Really?
Me: Yeah. So if you were intending that to go somewhere else, it didn't.
Noah: Well, I guess a stranger's just letting you know they care. *laughs*
Me: Thanks for that, then. *also laughs*
Noah: No problem.
Me: Bye.

That's it. I got an Electronic Hug from a stranger. Whether intentional or not. It was odd.

In searching for a image to personify an electronic hug, I found this. Ah, you crazy New Zealanders.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You didn't get his age or status??!! He did leave you an elctronic hug after all. For all you know it could be a major hottie looking to date a great lakes state native. Just a thought.

Jackie Parker said...

It didn't actually sound like he had any idea what was going on. And I was at work when I called him, flirting in my shared office would have been a bit, well, odd, to say the least.

Cory said...

What do you mean "flirting in my shared office would have been a bit odd?!??!" If I can manage to hit on a guy while presenting at Spring Institute, surely you can do a little flirting in front of someone!

Jackie Parker said...

Wait - how did you flirt with a guy during your SI presentation! OMG. I so couldn't do that.

Anonymous said...

Wow, you are on fire. Now you've got random people calling you. I can only imagine what things will be like when you come back in three days :)