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Mobile phone, cellphone, moby... No matter how you call
it, the little intruder has conquered the world with the force of a hurricane.
I have generally nothing against it – a useful gadget, a fun toy. But sometimes
it has its own cunning ways to toy with me.
One day, I heard the beep of an incoming SMS. I reached
for my phone and read the message: "Hello, love, what are you doing? I’ll
call you when I’m home alone. Kisses, Renata." I stared at the display.
The only Renata I knew was a member of my extended family and I really doubted
that she would send me amorous messages. And the possibility I could have a
secret female admirer seemed similarly fishy. "Dear Renata," I wrote
back. "I’m afraid you have a wrong number. Good luck at the correct
one." The phone fell silent and I spared a thought for the embarassment of
the poor girl in love who was writing her message so excitedly that she typed a
wrong number.
A few days later my mobile rang and a girl’s voice
chirped: "Hi, it’s Radka! I want to speak to Vašek!" What, another
mistake?! I immediately developed an alternative theory: Perhaps some guy was
giving a fictitious phone number – mine, coincidentally – to all girlfriends he
wanted to get rid of. Wouldn’t it be a crafty and effective way to deal with
unwanted admirers? I assured poor Radka that I was no Vašek and never had been,
and I hung up, waiting what would come next.
Some days passed uneventfully and then my mobile beeped,
announcing an SMS from an unfamiliar number. I opened it and read: "Hello!
My baby girl was born, her name is Eliška, she measures 50 cm and weighs 3 kg.
We are both OK." Ugh. That was even a bit more than I had expected. I felt
like responding: "Great news, but I swear I’m not her father!!"
Eventually, I settled for a neutral: "Congratulations, though I think you
are announcing your happy news to a wrong person." I started at my mobile,
expecting a call from the angry mum or her lawyer any moment. Instead, another
SMS beeped. "It’s me, Soňa, your former classmate, I’m just texting from
my husband’s mobile phone." Oops. In the end, it was my turn to be
embarassed.
Mysterious girls forgotten, I was was sitting at my
computer the other day, trying to work and occasionally petting a dog messing
around. Suddenly, I got an instant message from my foreign friend: "Hey,
you’ve just called me? What’s up?" He seemed genuinely puzzled and worried
– I usually don’t use my phone for contacting somebody living a thousand miles
away. But I was equally confused. "No, I didn’t," I replied.
"Yes, you did," he insisted. "I’ve got a call from your number
and there were just some strange sounds coming from the phone..." I
reached into my backpack and checked my mobile. Indeed, there was a recent call
to my friend. I frowned – how on earth did that happen? And then my eyes
wandered to the cute furry creature running around... and occasionally jumping
on my chair and landing on my backpack. "No, I didn’t call you," I
wrote to my friend. "A dog did." That the dog’s paws stepping on my
closed backpack managed to select a number from the middle of my address book
and successfully conduct a call across the globe seemed quite an amazing
achievement. But one shouldn’t underestimate any creatures – including the
mischievous invention called a mobile phone...
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