I feel this all the way down to my pikachu socks 🥺
When I was a little kid, I remember my mum saying to someone that I was shy.
I wasn't shy, I was fucking terrified of everyone, everything and everywhere that wasn't my house.
We didn't have a phone in the house for many years and when I was 13 my dad got a landline installed.
All was fine for a while, I didn't use the phone as I only had one singular friend and she lived just 12 houses away from me. She didn't have a landline phone either. I would just run down the road to her house, knock on the door and ask her mum if Helen was in. So I had no need to use the phone.
Then the calls started. At first it only affected mum. Someone would ring the house phone and just say nothing. She could hear them shuffling their feet in the booth of a payphone.
This was back when anyone could find your number in the phone book. If they knew your name they could get your number and address.
I picked up the phone when it was ringing one time. The man on the phone was breathing hard and said the most vile things. I slammed the phone down and ran to my dad. He typed the 1471 code into the phone, rang the number and after a few rings a lady answered the phone. She told us it was a payphone. The payphone that was situated just around the corner from our house.
This freaked us out. This was the 80s, we didn't have cctv.
Dad changed our number and asked to be X directory. This meant they couldn't get our number from a book anymore.
The trouble stopped, I'm guessing he picked another number from the book and hassled someone else.
Years later, I'm grown up living in my own house, my best friend lives in the same house with me, and we start getting weirdo phone calls. It went on for months.
When we moved I decided to not get a phone at the new place. I went for 7 years with no phone. It was awesome.
Fast forward to the 90s and I still had no land line but my dad wanted to be able to contact me. The rest of the family had mobile phones, my best friend had a landline, I was still refusing to have a phone because of my fears.
He got me a pager. 🙄 Against my will I had to carry it around so my dad could page me. I would then have to walk to a payphone to ring him. We had a good system, I would ring the house phone and drop the call and he would ring straight back so I didn't have to pay.
Then my brother got a mobile phone and convinced me to get the exact same phone because normally a text cost 12 pence but between these phones it was 5 pence.
This was also back when one network couldn't ring another network so we all got BT phones, which later became O2.
Over the years I've realised that I really don't like talking to strangers on the phone. I even feel anxious trying to make appointments for the Dr.
The worst ones are when I psyche myself up to make an important call only to be met with the automated system. "If you want blah please press 1"
I have maybe 10 minutes of what I call "bravery battery" to use and they waste half of it with their circle pit of despair. When someone finally picks up the call it's like a jump scare and I immediately want to throw up.
Incoming calls are even worse. My heart rate skyrockets as soon as the land line starts ringing. Most times it's Helen, but on the times it isn't my stomach drops and my brain freezes.
I don't think my relationship with phones will ever improve now. I'm fine with texts, emails, msgs through the apps, as they give me time to process the information before requiring action but phone calls are not my favourite thing.
I'm home alone watching Batman Forever for the umpteenth time and Dick started crying about his parents so I yelled, "Oh my God, he's crying. Someone kill me!" then immediately, "but actaully please don't..." cause I'm home alone and I'm scared.
