In college I had a friend who, whenever a woman he found attractive would walk by or come into a room, would say, “Boing!” It was pretty obnoxious. I told him so more than once. Some of the women would ignore him. Others would give him a look that just said, “Grow up.” I assume he did eventually grow out of it.
So one afternoon I walked to the bus stop. There was a woman already there. I kept a polite distance the way I would with any stranger. Then a noise came from my jeans.
BOING! BOING! BOING!
It was my phone. I’d picked this noise as the text alert message because I thought it was funny. And earlier that day it had gone off in a meeting with my boss. “I should probably change that to something else,” I said sheepishly.
“No!” she said. “It’s funny!”
It’s funny until it goes off next to a complete stranger and then it sounds obnoxious, and possibly even suggestive when the stranger happens to be a woman. I hadn’t thought about it that way until I was standing at the bus stop and I had flashbacks to college. I’m probably—hopefully—being overly analytical about this. When I pulled out my phone that should have made it clear why I was boinging. I still felt like a jackass. After reading the text I stuck my phone back in my pocket.
A bus drove up. It was one for a different route than mine. The woman walked over to it and I thought, great, she will never see me again, and we can both put this possibly creepy incident behind us.
Then as she was stepping onto the bus I got another text.
You can always put it on vibrate in your pants. Oh wait…
I set my first cell phone to vibrate shortly after I’d gotten it because I was going into a meeting. Halfway through somebody called me and I jumped up. I thought there was a wild animal in my pants.
My current iPhone also buzzes really loudly when it’s on vibrate. I’m not sure if it would help.
Oh my gosh, that story is hilarious (because it didn’t happen to me). But to put things into perpective, it could have been much, much worse. Like what if you were at a funeral visitation? “Helen, I’m so sorry about your grandmother. But you must feel glad that the funeral home made her look so lovely.” BOING!
See. Could’ve been much worse.
Could’ve been so much more hilarious. I’m the guy who always likes to break the tension at funerals. “Hey, you finally got him to wear a tie!” or something like that. Still now that you put it that way it makes me think I broke the tension at the bus stop.
I recently visited a friend, and her daughter played games on my phone all afternoon. Well she changed my text sound to bugs bunny’s ‘what’s up doc’. I usually keep the ringer loud when I drive, cuz loud music. It prolly rang 10 times before I realized what it was.
And. I forget the name, but that movie with the guys from SNL(Garth and Bohemian Rhapsody etc). He always said schwiinngg!!. Maybe that should be your next ringtone.
It’s a good thing you figured it out. A tech guy came and worked on my wife’s computer once. The first time she turned it on after that it yelled, “GOOOOOOD MORNIN’ VIETNAM!” Somehow I think that would be a better ringtone for me.
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