I watched something quite fascinating, and at the same time totally hilarious, today.
A friend of mine bought a new cordless phone, with all the latest bells and whistles and then some. This phone has, among a zillion other things, the totally annoying habit of actually telling you the number of who is calling. A weird robotic voice reads you the number of the caller…that is, if the caller has not chosen to hide his or hers number. It took a while to figure out all the features, but once installed it worked like a charm.
Later, me, my friend and a third acquaintance, lets call him M, was just hanging in front of the TV. M is a bit older then us and technically illiterate to the extent of having trouble with microwave-ovens.
Suddenly, a loud beep followed by the robotic voice loudly declaring “UNIDENTIFIED CALLER!” scared the shit out of us. I looked at M, who was closest to the phone. M in turn was looking in the direction of where the phone was with an extremely confused look in his face, as if he was trying to pinpoint the source of this sudden outburst of verbal information. A few seconds passed, and M slowly started to relax and leaned back into the couch again, while all the time keeping a watchfull eye on the phone. *BEEP* “UNIDENTIFIED CALLER” the phone stated again, this time a bit louder as if trying to really make a point here. Judging by his size, I would never have guessed that M would be able to react and move at such a great speed. Within a split second, M had thrown himself forward and was now flying over the sofa. While sliding head first across the coffee-table, he rolled over on his back and grabbed the phone while sliding pass it. Still in momentum, he slides over the edge of the table, and while airborn he twists his body around and throws the phone across the room, all in one swift move. As M lands with a big *thump* on the floor me and my friend, both starring in awe, follow the phone trough the air and out trough an open window.
– “What the…” I mumble as Im trying to grasp this somewhat unexpected chain of events.
– “YOU THREW MY PHONE OUT THE WINDOW, YOU FREAKING MORON!” my friend interupts me.
– “Of course I did, it was talking. PHONES SHOULD NOT TALK! …unless…there is someone else in the other end talking in *another* phone, and the phone here repeats what they say…then it might be ok…I think…”. M says as he stands up from the floor and brushes the dust off his clothes.
– “But this phone talks when someone ca…” I say, but instead of finishing the sentence I decide to hold back my friend who is charging across the livingroom aiming for M’s face by swinging a 2 liter coke-bottle over his head.
– “I suspected it was the phone the first time something talked, but I was not sure so I decided to forget and forgive…” M says while taking a step back to avoid a fatal blow from the bottle. “But then, it did it again…so I killed it!” he says, now safely out of reach from the coke-swinging maniac furiously trying to break free from my grip.
My friend lives on the third floor.
The phone survived (despite M’s best effort to assure the opposite) but the display is severely cracked, the casing is scratched, a big piece of the top right corner is missing, and the robotic voice doesnt quite have the same tone of authority anymore. In fact, it sounds more like a broken radio submerged under water in a big metal tube.
M survived too, despite my friends attempts to make him share the phones ill-deserved fate. M now hides on a top-secret location under false name, but he says he is doing just fine and is not bothered by any talking phones. Any further explanation to his irrational behaviour has not been given, and knowing M, I doubt we will ever get one.