Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The Previous Owner

When we moved from Japan to DC, one of the first things I did (literally straight from getting off the plane) was get a cell phone number.  The number I happened to get belonged to someone else before me.  Her name is Tiffany (whose last name I'll keep to myself).  I know because I got calls for her frequently in the first few months that I had the number.  Most were automated, but occasionally a real human would call for her.  I told them all the same thing: it wasn't her number any more.  I'm sure lots of people have had this same experience.
As the calls persisted, I became more and more curious about this Tiffany who had failed to tell so many people when her number changed.  Naturally, I started to invent a life for her, since the callers were quite persistant and she was brought to my attention so regularly.  I assumed that she was up to her ears in debt because I couldn't think of any better reason for my phone to be called every day by an automated, unknown number around the same time (between 8:00 and 9:00 am).  I could understand not telling the money lenders what her new number was, even if they were really annoying to me.
The ones that baffled me for a long time were the calls from humans who were clearly not calling for professional reasons, and the texts from similar sources.  The guy who opened the conversation with "Girl, where you at?" for example, was probably a friend of some sort, right?  So  may be Tiffany was trying to break ties with a few people and simply failed to send them her new number as a result.  May be...
I blissfully made up my own stories of Tiffany's life, depending on the most recent calls (which persisted well past a year after I had the number).  I never figured I find out anything about her beyond her name and the fact that she used to have my number.  She was, for my purposes, a fictional character in my own mental dramas. 
Then, when I was pregnant with Lily and reached a point where my belly wouldn't fit in normal clothes, I went to the mall in search of maternity T-shirts.  The lady at the store asked for my number to put my name in the system (they do that a lot at maternity stores).  When I gave her my number, she replied, "Tiffany?"  I laughed out loud before I corrected the clerk.  It was an interesting way to discover that my phone had been owned by someone else who, aside from overspending, was at some point pregnant.  It lended a whole new level to my pretend life for her.  Also, now we had something in common. 
A few days ago, I got a piece of junk mail for Tiffany.  It was addressed to her at my address.  It totally weirded me out.  I can only assume that someone had a record of my phone number belonging to Tiffany, and also a record of my phone number some how being attached ot my current address, so they assumed she lives here.  It would be too much of a coincidence if she had actually lived here.  I mean, DC is small, but not that small.  It was strange all the same.  The person who I had made into a fiction for my own entertainment has gotten to be a little too alive.  I don't get calls for her very often anymore, and I think I'll kind of be glad when I move again and get someone else's old number.

1 comment:

Larissa said...

You could always look her up on Zabba search. It'll tell you way too much about her. We've had this problem with wrong numbers and we'll google the people.