HI, IT’S ME

Hi, it’s me. I’m glad you didn’t pick up. It’s probably easier for me that way to tell you what I’m going to tell you because I know you’ll listen, but I can be less afraid of your response.  You’ll listen to my message just out of curiosity if nothing else. You might be listening right now. I know you do that.  You’ll see someone’s name and you won’t pick up. I’ve seen you do that all the years of growing up but I especially began to notice it when I was in middle school because I thought, Why doesn’t Dad just pick up the phone and say hello rather than staring at the phone listening to the other person talk into the message machine? I also noticed another thing around that time, because I got my first cell phone, and so when you would call, it wouldn’t show your name, but instead it just said “No Caller ID”. Why do you do that?  And yet, when you get a call, you always check the caller ID to see who it is and sometimes you just listen to them talking without picking up. I know you gave me a reason, I think I did ask as some point, at first, until I decided whatever.  But did you ever think about the fact that you are the only person I know, and I get lots of calls, and you are the only person I know who does this, and so you are the only person who shows up on my phone as “No Caller ID”, so obviously I know it’s you. Even scams usually have some number.  So why, exactly? Maybe now that I’m an adult pretty much, you can explain why you do this. It’s not as though you work for the FBI or that you do nefarious things, or do you? I can only think that you don’t want to be traced. Doctors with hundreds of patients might do this but they have other means, like an office number. Maybe lawyers who work with prisons or drug dealers or I don’t know. I can’t think of all the reasons why someone needs to have “No Caller ID”, but I have a hunch that all the possible professions or occupations don’t apply to you. So is this just something you make up in your imagination, being incognito, like dramatic play?  Pretending you are somebody that runs a life needing to be concealed?  And when someone calls you why not just pick up and deal with it?  Now that I think of it, maybe you just like the power of being able to listen to other people but not chip in? Not engage with the other person, to protect yourself so you can do a bunch of listening and then prepare how you’re going to respond, not have to deal with the mess of real time communication, opening yourself up to being seen, having to answer to the invitation, or obligation. Maybe that’s how you think of it, as an obligation. Do you consider that maybe it’s just the normal give-and-take of a conversation? This is making more sense to me now that I am saying it out loud. It is making more sense what is going on, because that’s it, isn’t it. You don’t like to risk real connection. Just stating who you are. Listening to who the other person is. This makes sense because I feel it anyway, you know. When you do this with your kids - with me, your daughter, and all four of us in fact - then doesn’t that mean something to you? It means something to me, obviously, since I’m going on about it right now. Well it’s been hard sometimes, it’s no secret. We’ve had issues, but sometimes I wish I could always know that if I’m calling you, there is no chance that you would not pick up the phone. You would not just sit there listening to me talk into a machine. You would not even think of doing that for a second. And you wouldn’t do that for any of your kids. And if you’re calling me you would want me to know it’s you, my Dad, rather than “No Caller ID”.  Well this is what happens when you don’t pick up. I get to talk about whatever, and ramble, and you will probably listen to this whole thing and be either glad or sad that you didn’t pick up. Oh, and I’m realizing now that your phone setting doesn’t put a limit on the length of message it can record, because this is a long one. Well anyway, the reason I called is to tell you that I just eloped with Rusty. I guess we’ll talk later.