One of the best things to have come out of this blogging gig is that I’ve become friends with people I never would have known had I never started writing online. Some of these friends are other local bloggers I’ve met through our monthly meetups, but the dearest members of my online tribe tend to live several hundred miles away.
I hadn’t actually talked to Meg since our visit to Oklahoma last December. We tweet and email frequently, and maybe it’s because we’re always so connected online that we rarely feel the need to call one another. I’m there when she needs me and vice versa.
Last night Autumn and I were having dinner at McDonald’s when a notification on my phone told me Meg had responded to one of my tweets. I looked at Autumn and asked, “Do you want to send a picture to Meg?”
“Yeah!” she said so I pulled her up onto my lap, snapped the picture and sent it off in a text message to my favorite Okie.
A minute later my phone rang. It was Meg.
“Hey!” I exclaimed.
“Hi,” said Meg. “Did you just send a text?”
“Yes,” I said, “We’re just here at McDonalds and wanted to say hi.”
“Cute picture,” she said.
“Wow, you sound horrible,” I said. “Are you sick?”
“No,” she said, “I’m feeling fine. Maybe I just need to sound more enthusiastic.”
“Maybe,” I said. “You just don’t sound like yourself at all.”
“Nope, I’m fine, but I’m going to let you go now.”
And with that our conversation ended.
Wow, that was brief, I thought. Usually our phone calls are a little more lively and not so short. I shrugged it off, knowing she was nursing a recent Sea Doo injury and figured she was either not feeling well or was just being considerate of my time since we were out for dinner.
I didn’t think anything of it until later. I was still feeling a little bit embarrassed about telling her she sounded so bad. I hadn’t talked to her in months, after all, and one of the first things I say to her is that she sounds like death?
So I decided to hop onto Twitter and issue an apology.
A few minutes later I received this reply.
Oh. Ok. Clearly she wasn’t offended, but I figured she would at least know what I was talking about. Her tweet suggested otherwise so I went on to explain.
This was her reply.
I chucked, remembering Meg’s tweet from previous day about being on pain meds for her broken finger. I figured she had called back after receiving the text and, being drugged up, simply didn’t remember the conversation.
The reply I received suddenly turned the conversation into a whole different direction.
My heart quickened as I stared at those words.
Oh no.
I immediately sent Meg a direct message.
ME: “OK, Now I’m freaking out. Is your number 918-xxx-xxxx?”
MEG: “NO! Who did you talk to?! It’s 918-xxx-xxxy!”
ME: “Um, I have no idea, but someone in the 918 area code now has a picture of me and Autumn on their phone. No wonder you didn’t sound like you!”
I’d had the number wrong. Apparently when I transferred all my numbers to the new phone, I made a mistake when I keyed in her digits, all of which were correct except for the last one.
Which means I sent a picture of me and my daughter to a complete stranger.
Who then called back and gave no indication whatsoever that she didn’t know me or that I had sent the text to the wrong number.
WHO DOES THAT???
Feeling very Lucy Ricardo-ish, I went into my contacts, changed Meg’s number to the correct one and dialed her up.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t know it wasn’t you,” I said. “The Okie accent threw me!”
“That’s okay,” she said, “At first I thought you guys were messing with me. It’s nice to know I’m not going crazy!”
We laughed and fell into the familiar rhythm of friendly banter I had expected when her impostor called earlier. And here I’d been expecting a laugh at her expense. The joke had been on me the whole time.
Shortly after our phone call ended, I went back into my text history and looked at the picture I sent to the stranger. Above it was another text message I’d sent to the same number a few weeks earlier.
Oh yeah. The joke is definitely on me.
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