heidikins.com

No X-Texting Allowed!

I am fighting with my phone. I have service in odd-ball places and normal-person places, my camera works just fine, the mp3 player is so fancy I still don’t know how to use it…but I am fighting with my phone.

There’s the first reason, the hating to listen to voice mail; and there’s the ugly, monstrous, second reason–apparently my X still has my phone number.

Now, I am of the opinion that there are certain instances where phone numbers should be erased, deleted, forgotten. Instances like when that really cute guy doesn’t remember your name, for the 17th time in a row. Or when your favorite Chinese take-out place becomes a tacky tattoo parlor. Or when the coffee shop around the corner stops using sugar. Or when you leave a psycho x-husband. Numbers. Should. Be. Deleted.

I was the dutiful, comply-with-rules-of-disengagement one who promptly black-listed the X, deleted his phone number and tried to forget all of that nasty, sticky, X stuff.

And then? Then my phone decides to hate me. Big Time.

The situation: A slowish weeknight last week, watching some sort of T.V…heidikins receives a text from an unknown area code stating the following:

Stranger: Heidi–is this still your phone number?

heidikins: That depends, who is this?

Stranger: Someone in [redacted city] who has been thinking about you, how are you?

heidikins: (audibly, and not in a text) “What! The! Hell! Are you kidding me?!?” (obviously, no response was sent.)

X: The other day I saw a blonde girl with a big hairy guy walking down the street and I thought of you. I also walked past [redacted landmark] and remembered how much you loved it, how happy you were that day.

X: What? No response for ol’ [redacted name]? I just wanted to make sure you’re ok. I haven’t heard from you forever, how are you?

X: Do you still have the same email address? [answer: no.] I tried emailing you the other day to no avail…

heidikins: “Seriously? What the hell is wrong with him!? Does he never get the hint?!

X: It was just a “Hey, haven’t talked to you, what have you been up to” email. No big deal. It’s just been a long time, just want to make sure life is going well for you.

X: I’m done with school for good in a couple of weeks–then I can fully concentrate on the [redacted sports team I now hate by association] for the summer! How about you?

At this point I turned off my phone, I couldn’t handle the constant bleeping reminders of a whole life I willingly left behind.  And in the second place, why does he feel like he has to “make sure I am doing ok”?!?  He could have cared less when we were together, why the sudden urge?  Ugh.

But despite the dramatic, difficult-to-deal with emotions this little non-exchange brought to the surface, I am generally pissed. I mean, I know it’s a free country and everything, and I suppose a (bastardly, dead-beat) person could text another person at any point for whatever reasons. In recent months I have received several spam text messages for all sorts of ridiculous things…but not a single one brought up a spewage of memory vomit like these did.

New Rule: No drunk-dialing, no x-texting, and definitely no drunk-x-texting–while I was not intoxicated during this transaction, but I would bet good stiletto-money that he was sloppy-faced drunk. I would also bet that whatever poor girl he’s somehow suckered into dating him has recently picked a fight, left him or otherwise broke up with him. And in some ways that makes me happy…but mostly that makes me feel sorry for him.

*See how I take the repeated x-texting and turn it into drunk-x-texting and the demise of his assumed relationship? Yeah, I’m mature like that.

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