The Telephone and Other Disasters

I blame Older Sister for the whole thing.

Older Sister is currently serving a mission in South America. Older Sister emails the family every week. Older Sister's most recent email informed us that the Mission Department has changed the missionary email rules. Now missionaries can email their friends and new converts as well as their families.

Immediately I thought of Best Friend Boy. Best Friend Boy is, well, my best friend who's a boy. He is serving in the mission just north of Older Sister's mission. Best Friend Boy's entire life is dedicated to God right now, which is a wonderful thing, but it means that we don't get to communicate much and only through letters. Sometimes that can be hard.

So when Older Sister said missionaries can now email their friends, a syllogism sprang into my head:
Premise: I am one of Best Friend Boy's friends.
Premise: Best Friend Boy can email friends.
Conclusion: Best Friend Boy can email me.

First I congratulated myself for thinking in syllogisms. Then I congratulated myself for remembering the word, "syllogism." Then I realized that I did not, in fact, remember the word "syllogism" and that I was actually calling the syllogism "one of those proof things" in my head. Which clearly means that college isn't doing anything for me and that I'm just wasting my time. Which caused me to decide that I should go to the registrar's office right now and demand my money back.

And when I demanded my money back, I would say, "I demand my money back! For the kind of tuition I pay, at the very least I should be learning to remember what those proof things are called."

And the office people would say, "But we can't give you your money back because you don't pay any tuition. You're on scholarship."

And then I would say, "Oh yeah? That's DISCRIMINATION!" And then they would have to give me money. Because discrimination is the magic word.

Once I'd syllogised that Best Friend Boy could email me, I realized the next logical step would be for me to get his address. That, my friends, would be easier said than done, because getting his email would require calling his mother...

...and I'm deathly afraid of the telephone.

It's because I'm overabundantly awkward, you see. When I have extremely awkward interactions in real life, I can sometimes mitigate them by looking attractive. Or by saying funny things. When I'm on the phone, however, people can't see how attractive I look. Funny things tend to not be that funny on the telephone, and even suave people usually sound somewhat awkward. Thus the telephone is basically my nemesis.

(Once I had this friend-crush called the Chess Master. Ah, the Chess Master. I won't delve into the backstory with this boy now, but suffice it to say that long ago, when I really, really liked the Chess Master, I tried to call him. It took me at least ten tries of dialing his number before I found the courage to hit SEND. When the phone actually started ringing, I panicked. I threw that thing across the room like it was a time bomb. Or a red-hot potato. Or a piece of chocolate that actually turned out to be white chocolate. Sadly, this example embodies the majority of my call-making experiences.)

After determining that the only way to get Best Friend Boy's email was by experiencing Doom Itself aka the telephone, I slept on that realization. I went to school. I came home and ate a taco, a strawberry, an ice cream sandwich, and a blueberry muffin. Have you ever eaten a muffin and felt like you were asphyxiating? Because that's the sensation eating this muffin gave me. Asphyxiation. With blueberries.

Eventually, I stopped stalling and prepared myself to face my doom. I thought about putting off the phone call until the next day, or the next week, or maybe the next month--but no. If I put off the phone call, I would use that time to convince myself that getting Best Friend Boy's email wasn't important, which simply wasn't true. Missionaries need to hear from their families and friends and know that they have support. Besides, I wanted to email him.

So after much internal hemming and hawing, I lickety split dialed his mother's number. This time I only had to dial it twice before I could make myself press SEND. I was tempted to throw the phone, but I didn't.

Ring ring ring. "Hello?"

Words cannot describe the terribleness of that moment. I only barely found my voice. I stuttered. I corrected myself in the middle of my own sentences. Surely I sounded like a fool. But Best Friend Boy's mother was kind, even though I had interrupted a family gathering. She was gracious. It seemed she was trying her best to put me at ease. When I hung up after some ten minutes, I had received a promise that she would text the address to me as soon as possible.

I was fairly skipping for the next half-hour. Now I could email Best Friend Boy and hear from him more regularly. World peace was imminent. AIDS would surely cure itself. And I had talked on the telephone, and it had turned out well...

"But wait," I said to myself. I rewound the phone conversation in my head and stuck on one moment in particular.

"Did Best Friend Boy tell you about the new email rules?" I'd said in this moment.

"No," Best Friend Boy's mother had said. "I know there were some..."

Pause. Replay. "No." "No." "No," she'd said. Uneasiness crept into my brain. I rushed to my laptop and began to do some speedy research. Within moments I'd turned up various discussions talking about how not all missions had instituted the new rules yet.

...oh no. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. I dug a little deeper. With my super internet stalking skillz (they are quite mad, I tell you) I turned up a missionary blog from an elder in Best Friend Boy's mission. Among the emails he'd sent his family, there was one commenting on how their mission president had not yet put the new rules into place.

A terrible, terrible feeling washed over me. Whyyyy had I decided to use the telephone? Had I not called Best Friend Boy's mom, I would have sent her some kind of written communication that she surely would have taken her a while to respond to, and then I wouldn't have rushed into things, and I probably would have thought to do more research, and then I wouldn't have made a fool of myself for nothing and-

My phone buzzed. It was the text giving me the email address. OH NO! Not only had I made a fool of myself, I had given Best Friend Boy's entire family faulty information. For all I knew, they were now contacting every single person Best Friend Boy had ever known, sharing the joyous news that he could now exchange emails with them and giving away his address like it was free nonwhite chocolate. Then Best Friend Boy's inbox would be overflowing with emails he couldn't respond to, and it would be totally distracting, and he might even get in trouble!!! Clearly, I had to do something.

Quickly I whipped up a response text that thanked his mom for the address. Then I gave a spiel about how on second thought I wouldn't email him until I had more information, along with a strong yet discreet hint that no one else outside the family should email him either. Then I thanked her again. It was like a thank-you sandwich with a warning in the middle instead of cold cuts.

Yeah I decided, reading it over. That sounds natural.

I sent it.

Yeah I realized, thinking it over. That didn't sound natural at all.

You know how, when you do something embarrassing, they say that you'll laugh about it later? Well, I laughed inside about this one right away. Only it wasn't a ha-ha-that-was-so-funny-shrug-it-off laugh. It was more of a sobbing, hysterical laugh. I laughed until I was exhausted, physically and emotionally.

Then I said to myself, "I'm gonna go eat another muffin."