Does this title sound like it’s directed to my wife? It’s not. She can see my phone whenever she wants. Read on!
The other day I took a jacket1 and a pair of jeans to the tailor. My jacket just needed a button. I should learn how to sew a button. But I only need one every 10 years or so, and $5/decade seems like a fair price to pay to not have to learn how to do something. The jeans were a little more complicated. Whatever. That’s not the point of this. The point is: I paid in advance.
So when I picked up my my jacket and jeans a week later, I was surprised when the clerk followed me out to my car. The computer, apparently, suggested that I had not paid in advance. My account was in arrears! But the thing was: I had paid. In advance.
Maybe, the man suggested, we could check your phone. Look at the charges on the credit card. Perhaps that might resolve the matter.
Oh, no. We don’t need to look at my phone.
Because before I knew what was happening, a new kind of grin was spreading across my face. A feeling of pleasure I hadn’t known before raced through me. As I pulled the printed receipt from my wallet, I was in ecstasy. The feeling of producing a physical receipt? Under suspicion of delinquent payment? Or for any other reason, probably? This is a sensation I could become very much addicted to.
A couple of days later, I called in a pickup order to the juice place, because I’m a bougie dude with shit to do, and my order is specific and crazy. But when I showed up: no juice!
That’s weird, I said. I just called it in.
Well, maybe, said the lady2 we could look at your phone and see what number you dialed.
Um. Ok. I will show you my phone. But only to show you my list of recent calls, where the number of the juice place is programmed in, because I call in an order like 3 times a week. Then I will redial, and your phone will ring, and I will recount the conversation we had 10 minutes prior. I will do this good-naturedly, but, remember: you asked.
This felt much less-good than the receipt thing. But, either way: Stop asking to see my phone, you fucking weirdos!
- Have we talked about jackets? Every man looks better in a jacket. I wear one every day, even in Texas, where it gets hot as hell. But I work inside. If I worked outside I’d dress like a nomad in the desert.
- Who, to be fair, is part of a crew that’s forever deadlocked (dreadlocked?) in a three-way tie with a pizza place and an ice cream shop for the stoniest staff in Austin, Texas, a title for which there is fierce, if languid, competition.