Sorry, Wrong Number Part Deux

Some time ago, I shared a "wrong text" that I'd inadvertently received on my cell phone.

This happens occasionally and I find it weird and amusing and sorta unintentionally voyeuristic, cause I know the text wasn't meant for me yet, there it is on my phone's little screen, all high-context-y communication and private and subtle and assuming that the eyes taking in all the electronic Prince and the Revolution-type shorthand is the right set of eyes, and then I feel a little guilty and a little intrigued and--depending on what was texted--a little titillated and naughty.

Take the text that came chiming in at 1:27 AM this morning, rousing--but not quite waking--me from my sleep, which read (sic): Can you just tell me why it matters babe C.R.E.A.M.

There I was at 6:45 this morning after I'd gotten out of bed, looking like a shorter, pastier version of Don King, pre-coffee, bundled in my robe, squinting through semi-crusted eyes, staring dumbly at the tiny Sanyo phone in my hand and trying to decipher exactly 9 words of backlit text and one cryptic acronym that wasn't even meant for me.

I wondered what mattered? Did they have lousy sex? Did they not? Did they fight? Did he sleep with someone else? Not share a secret? Maybe he winked at another chick? Or lost his job? Or she? Or he couldn't get it up? And what the hell was "C.R.E.A.M.?"

I momentarily worried that my not knowing made me woefully unhip, horribly prudish, ridiculously square or just plain ignorant. I Googled C.R.E.A.M. and came up with the lyrics for a song of the same name by the Wu-Tang Clan: "...a man with a dream with plans to make C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)......"

Ah. C.R.E.A.M. Now I think I get it.

Not sex, money. They were fighting over money. He's superficial, she wants more (or vice-versa). One of them is a Republican and one of them is a Democrat and perhaps theirs is a doomed, tragic sort of Romeo & Juliet-type love. Maybe one of them is a non-profit earth muffin type, helping homeless animals and starving children, and the other is hungrily climbing the corporate ladder, enjoying bonuses, perks and kickbacks. Maybe.

Yeah, that's it. An irreversible clash of ideologies. Obama vs. the MILF.

At least, that's the drama I fabricated for these two fictional characters, based off of 9 words of text and one acronym mistakenly sent to approximately one square inch of the wrong cell phone screen at 1:27 AM this morning.

Babe.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Someone in the universe thinks I am someone who I am not.

When I got home from my belly dance class last Sunday I glanced at my cell phone, which I'd left charging on the table and saw that I'd gotten a text message.

It read:

"R U having fun with Aunt Jackie? Lv u, Miss Lou."

Now, I don't know a "Miss Lou," (which sounds like a character from Faulkner, or maybe Tennessee Williams) nor do I have an "Aunt Jackie." In fact, this person's benign, thoughtful, totally random little inquiry--all written in uber-modern Prince & the Revolution text-y shorthand--had been, sadly, lost on the absolute wrong recipient.

I stared at it. I wrinkled my brow. I felt, briefly, invaded by strangers, and then suddenly didn't. I felt a twinge of concern that the "U" in question would not be able to let Miss Lou know that things were just swell with Aunt Jackie (I wondered if it was a slumber party and pictured sheets of cookies being baked, toes being painted candy-apple red, questions about sex and icky periods and deep kissing being bandied about) because the message had been routed to an entirely other phone. I tried to picture Aunt Jackie, Miss Lou, and "U," and various characters popped into my mind's eye, including a gaggle of enormous drag queens in curlers and housecoats, ala Divine in just about any John Waters movie.

Well, it's a possibility. You know.


And then I decided I needed to take a bath and go to bed and stop cogitating on a random wrong number. A random wrong text.

So I deleted it.