The Joy of Cellphones

I got a cryptic text message from Albert the other day. “I’m coming
good now”, it said. Thanks, bru, I really needed to know that. I had an
unlovely mental image of him with armloads of adult material bought on
credit from the Porn Barn. I shuddered. It took me a while to realise
the message was written using Nokia’s predictive text input – “good” and
“home” are written using the same keys. Those nifty little devices are
meant to facilitate communication, to keep us on the cutting edge of the
much vaunted information age. But I have such a string of
miscommunication I am sometimes tempted to toss mine away.

My worst cellphone moment is this: sending a message, intended for my
dearly beloved, that read “you make my heart leap my little honey
muffin”. Only she didn’t get it – I ended up sending it to Abdul’s
Taxis. Ten times. He’s the first person in my phone book, punched in
once when I needed a regular ride around the city on a business trip. My
phone had been in my pocket, and I’d obviously sat on the send key. Over
and over again. I just hope he doesn’t remember who I am.

And sending “I want to tear your clothes off and spank you” to Great
Aunt Agatha can have troubling consequences.

Then there are those “please call me” messages, free for the sender. I
get them often, usually about four in the morning. Thinking that a close
friend is in some kind of trouble, I always phone back – and get some
belligerent drunk in a shebeen somewhere, swearing at me above the
pounding kwaito, wanting to know how I got his number. “What you want?
You looking for man love, hey? I kill you!”

Every “please call me” I have ever received has been from a wrong number.

Then, for laughs, there’s Telkom’s SMS to home telephone service. You
can send a text message to a landline. When the phone is answered, a
machine reads out the message. Since the machine only speaks English,
it’s particularly fun to send messages in Afrikaans or some other
language, and listen to the garbled result.

What a riot it was at that party I was invited to in Woodstock, where a
group of crusties were getting severely blunted on Malawi Cob. Some wag
went into the toilet and sent an SMS to the home phone, which rang
through the dopey haze. “We know where you live”, intoned the robotic
voice. “And we’re coming to get you. Paranoia ensued, and I heard
whispers of “black helicopters”.

I don’t know, man. Sometimes I think we should develop our telepathy
skills instead.