So, I have this book that my friend Sam loaned me. It’s something to do with all these philosophical experiments everyone should do before dying. Of course, being the great friend that I am, I’ve only skimmed the pages during bouts of boredom.
However, one experiment that did catch my attention was based on the concept of picking up the phone and dialing random numbers, in hopes of getting the person on the other end to talk to you. It doesn’t sound like much of an experiment but actually turned out to be quite the experience.
My friend talked me into doing this article by handing me her cell, which I first used to order a large cheese pizza, and telling me to dial 11 numbers. Now, the rules were that I wasn’t able to tell the person why I was calling, at least not the entire reason. I would only tell them that I was bored, picked up the phone and dialed a number. It was their initial reaction which would prove whether the experiment was a failure or not.
The first person who answered was what sounded like a middle-aged male with a northern accent. He answered the phone, already annoyed with being unfamiliar with the caller and spoke with forced patience. After telling him my reason for calling, he asked me a question, which I couldn’t understand and asked him to repeat, which turned out to be a sarcastic remark that if I had time, which I obviously had more time than he had, to call someone else. He then hung up on me.
The second person that answered the phone sounded like another northern individual, this time a teen-age female. She seemed friendly enough and spoke as if I had woken her. Our conversation started awkwardly, me refusing to act like I didn’t know who she was, and her pretending to know how to respond. There was a couple of seconds where we politely asked how the other was and mumbled about being bored. It was then that I asked what she was up to and she responded by saying that she was at her grandma’s for the night. Well, I asked how old she was (demonstrating my inner pedophile was not my intention) and she responded with the age 11. I took a moment to realize what that could mean. So it turns out that what I thought was a teen-age female was an 11-year-old boy.
I thanked the kid for talking to me and told him to have a good night. I’m not sure of Tennessee laws, but I’m not ready to be arrested for a viewpoint article.
Then there was the third voice which greeted me, turning out to be an older woman. Her voice was tired, but had that light sound of kindness I associate with grandmothers. She told me that she had no problem with me calling, even out of boredom, but that she was half asleep. I was thankful for her time and hung up the phone happy that someone had been nice enough to allow me a brief moment of their time.
Well, it turned out that my fourth time was a charm. On that attempt at getting a real conversation flowing from a stranger, I was connected with someone named Carl, a 16-year-old who lived in Wyoming. At first, it seemed that there was a miscommunication. He thought that I was a distant family member, asking me if I’d seen so and so recently, and I thought he was being a wise guy. I played what I thought was his game until we both realized that the other was confused after I refused to give him my phone number, thinking he would report me for something, and he asked me my name again. With my response he realized I was a stranger and I realized that he had been genuine in his mistake. So I told him of my boredom and random dialing of numbers. He found it interesting and evidently decided it was a good enough reason to begin a conversation with a stranger.
Carl lives in Wyoming, is a Latter Day Saint, has nine siblings and doesn’t get out much. He told me about how he worked for his father, on a farm, helping slaughter cows and occasionally buffalo from North Dakota. He told me about his devotion to his religion and God. He told me about his lack of a social life due to being home-schooled. It seemed that we were polar opposites but for some reason our conversation flowed for nearly two hours.
It was amazing that two hours before this conversation I never knew that this person existed, that somewhere in the middle of nowhere there was someone just waiting for a conversation. Doing something like this helped me realize the measure of how much we limit ourselves. There are people who spend their entire lives living in the same town, marrying their high school sweetheart and never experiencing anything else.
How can we claim to find our soul mates or best friends when we’ve not been anywhere beyond the borders of our neighboring states or the outskirts of our country? Why not look farther? So what if it’s enough, you’ll never know what’s enough until you expect just a little more.
So I encourage everyone to pick up the phone, especially if you have a cell (everyone, what?), and dial a couple of unsystematic numbers. It’s a hit-and-miss process, but just see who picks up on the other end. Whether it is someone who’s too busy for you or someone who just might need to talk. It seems a little overly philosophical, but in reality it’s just the same as chatting online and wondering who’s behind the type. We have so much technology, so many forms of communication, which gives us the chance to reach out beyond restrictions.
Use the technology to do something other than text friends during your English class for once. Dial a couple of digits and just see who answers.

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