It was a Tuesday night, and a call came in on my PCS phone. My PCS phone has caller ID, and I didn't recognize the number that was calling. I figured right away that it was someone calling the wrong number. I answered my phone anyways.

Some guy asked for Amber. I told the guy he must have the wrong number, he apologized, and we both hung up our phones.

A minute later, my phone rings again. I recognized the number on the caller ID: it was the same guy already. I figured I could just not answer, then after hearing my voicemail greeting he'd realize he didn't misdial and that his problem is more systematic. Or, I could answer the phone and help him debug his problem. I just kept ignoring his calls, hoping he'd figure it out on his own.

First off, there are three separate area codes in the county where I live. My PCS phone is in the oldest of the three, and the other two were just added within the last couple years. So you might say that my phone's area code is the default one for this county. If a person jots down the number for another person and they forget to specify their area code, it's a reasonable assumption that their area code therefore matches the one on my PCS phone. When in reality, it might not. They might have just been absent minded. So that's the easiest way for this guy to fix his problem: he could just retry the same number in the other two area codes.

Secondly, maybe a few numbers were reversed and the guy should try a couple different permutations of my number?

Thirdly, the girl may just have thought the guy was creepy when he asked for her number, and she might have just made one up. And it's just my bad luck that the made up number matched my PCS phone.

I'm going to go with the third possibility here. Because the guy seemed kinda like a stalker or a creep. Because I didn't answer my phone again to assure him that Amber didn't live anywhere near my PCS phone, and because I didn't run through all the possible ways he could recover and track this Amber girl down (see first or second possibilities), he just kept calling and calling.

He never let the phone ring long enough to get to the voicemail greeting, or at least never left a message on my voicemail. So either he's one of those rude people who always avoids answering machines, or he's too dumb to realize after hearing the greeting the first time that he has the wrong number for this Amber chick. I mean, would a girl named Amber have a guy's voice saying "You've reached Scott's PCS phone, and I can't answer the phone right now..." on her voicemail greeting? How many times must a person hear that greeting to get the hint? This guy kept trying for half an hour, calling every few minutes. There were about ten calls from the guy recorded by my caller ID.

I think that girl Amber did the right thing. Of course, that's assuming there actually is an Amber. I mean, the guy calling could have fallen victim to some guy pretending to be a girl on the Internet. I guess I'll never know for sure.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.