For some reason I had always assumed that my phone kept a log of all incoming calls not just the ones I actually pick up. That would of course mean that I have received a remarkably small number of phone calls during the life of my phone but that is understandable considering how few people I have given out the number to. However, experimental evidence now suggests otherwise.
Occassionally my room goes crazy. Every electronic device in the room starts buzzing and beeping in an odd way. It is hard to describe if you have never heard it but it is quite an amazing experience. Often the culprit has been found to be an incoming call targetting my cell phone. That isn’t the only cause, but it is the most common. So when a few hours ago my room went crazy and I was half asleep I wasn’t really thinking about what caused it and I just wanted to go back to bed so I quickly turned off all of the electronic devices in my room that could potentially cause the crazy noise except for my mobile phone which I could not locate in the thirty seconds worth of time I decided to devote to the project. I then plopped right back down to sleep….
An hour or two later, maybe less, not sure exactly my room went crazy again, somewhere unconsciously I must have been remembering that this is often caused by my cell phone because this time I wake up and listen carefully. Yes. There! Underneathe the odd buzzing and beeping there is a distinctly recognizable and unmistakable sound of a phone vibrating. I push myself out of bed and force my way over in that direction. I find my phone nestled underneathe my television stand. It has long since stopped buzzing as has the rest of my room, so I pick it up and check my call logs. Nothing listed. For over a week in fact. That seems pretty odd. So thus I conclude that I was mistaken in assuming that my phone was logging all my calls. For either I am insane and losing it or my phone was in fact ringing in the middle of a sunday night and no log of who was trying to reach me was left.
Every rational consideration must begin with the assumption that the reasoner is not insane so I choose to believe that madness is not the cause. The only question remains who had tried to reach me. Luckily I know for a fact that my immediate family is quite well having spoken to each of them very recently and a quick check in on those readily available to me now finds them continuing to be well. Thus if there was a call it was either work, spam, extended family, prospective employer, or an ally. I don’t think my job would call in the middle of the night and then just hang up without leaving a message. A prospective employer would not call in the middle of the night at all. Spam is possibly but I think there are laws against those kinds of things. So that leaves the two possiblities left and no real way to determine which in those groups it was.
Oh well, rational behavior is to not to overreact to unusual circumstances with paranoia and to not work to change the things we cannot change. So I have done what I can in turning my phone from silent to normal, moving it to a readily locatable location even should it ring while I am sleeping. Thus all that is left to do is wait and see what happens. After all if it was important they would surely have left a voicemail, right?
Actually it occurs to me that that last sentiment although I have heard it many many times is utterly false. It ignores obvious truths of human nature. Most notably that people rarely want to leave voice mails and find it difficult to speak to a machine or a recording. Indeed, it is when we are most emotionally distraught it seems that we are least likely to leave a voicemail. It is a great irony then that when we most want to speak with a person, our behavior is such that it is most likely to make it less likely for us to actually do so. Humanity is like that.
What is really needed in this world is a true emergency button. That is to say a way in which you can contact anyone you please in such a way that the person receiving the contact knows that the circumstance was an emergency and a mechanism that won’t let that person rest until they are alerted of the emergency whether they want to ignore it or not. Thus you could when dialing out of whim or fancy or boredom simply call someone and hang up no harm no foul no worries all around, but when it matters you could call them and they would know to pick up. Ideally you could gradiate this with degrees of significance. I.e. you’d have your “I have big news to tell you alert” and you’d have your “I desperately need to talk to someone alert” and your “I am physically hurt or in trouble and need someone to get their arse over here and help me alert” and your “I really need a favor alert” and your “I’m thinking about killing myself alert” and your “I was worried about you and was calling to check up alert” and so on and so forth.
Rational behavior is to not overanalyze the small things and let what comes to be comes to be. So with that I choose to sleep again and let the world shake out however it will. Chances are I wouldn’t have been of any help anyways.
