A Bad Phone Day

I have Cellular Asperger’s Syndrome. No silly, not Asperger’s at the cellular level, Asperger’s of the cell phone! I hate, hate, hate talking on the phone, so much so that it really causes me problems. For instance, a friend recently recommended me for a small, recurring newsletter job. I was basically “in” without having to do much, other than make a phone call. Three weeks later (or maybe it was six), I had yet to make that call. Then I ran into one of the people involved.

“Still want that job?” she asked, looking mildly perplexed. Did I want the job? Did I not want the job? Why didn’t I call anybody back?

To be fair, something major came up and, for a while, I wasn’t sure I could take the job (because I would be living in the back of my car, and there’s no Internet access there). But once the something major was resolved, The Call became an insurmountable task. The longer I put it off, the worse it became. Some days I would pick up the phone, look at the number, and be unable to force myself to dial. Finally, the editor e-mailed me … and asked me to call him.

Argh! Why can’t the whole world run itself via text and e-mail! It’s so much easier! No awkward pauses, no dry mouth, no sweaty pits. No chance of misspeaking or mumbling or revealing my lisp, which is only charming on a ringleted five-year old girl.

Yesterday, the editor left me a voicemail message, and I swore I would call him back. The next day. Today is the next day. My phone just rang. I did not pick up. It could be him.

My phone problems go way back. When I was a kid—maybe ten or sixteen—my mom started making me schedule my own hair appointments. This was agony. I would beg her to make the call, but to no avail. She was really, really cruel about it! Clearly, this was supposed to help me get over my phobia, but it only made it worse.

Thank god for the Internet! Thank you, Steve Jobs or Al Gore or whoever it was who thinks he invented e-mail, so I could talk to way fewer people than I used to have to. Thank you, Google, for letting me make dinner reservations online and book airline travel, for letting me look up the hours of any business in America, the Netherlands or Spain, and schedule service calls and resolve customer service issues to my (virtual) satisfaction.

Generally, if I’m having a bad phone day, I can make myself dial if I use speakerphone. If I can imagine the other person is far away, not trying to bore into my brain, like an earwig in a science fiction movie. Other times, it helps to talk and focus my eyes far on something far away—out the window and over the hedges into the blameless blue sky. It’s a dissasociative technique familiar to abuse victims worldwide. Just me and the Spanish Inquisition, blocking out the pain.

Recently, I stopped by my dentist’s office to make appointments for my son and me. I stopped by. In person.

“I was just passing by,” I explained, “so I thought I’d stop in.”

Oddly, the receptionist thanked me. Said it was much easier to schedule the multiple appointments I needed in person than over the phone. We looked at the doctor’s schedule together on her monitor, and while I was there, we resolved an insurance issue that had been ongoing. They gave me a sticker and some dental floss before I left.  

It’s not people, you see, but the phone that’s the problem. I can talk to someone face to face. I’m shy, but chatty. I’m an introverted extrovert! I would have done extremely well to have lived in the Victoria Era—minus the corsets, and the inability to vote or wear pants or have an epidural—due to the practice of visiting and leaving one’s calling card. So civilized, wouldn’t you say? Much better than yakking away on a handheld device that’s probably going to give you cancer from radiation. At least I won’t have to talk on the phone when I’m dead. Unless I go to Hell. There, I’ll probably be assigned to the reception desk.

I had my cholesterol checked. In March. Sure would like to know what those results are. Too bad I can’t call!

Or I could, if I focused on the robin in the back yard, perched on the telephone wire, the sweet little robin who’s never had to pick up a phone in her life, but who clutches the wire leading to the phone pole with her unsuspecting yellow feet.

“Just close your eyes,” I would say to her, if she ever needed to make a call. To her husband, for example, to ask if he needed her to pick up some extra earthworms on her way back to the nest. “Close your eyes and think of England.”