jk, lol!

I had just crossed the border into Illinois on a road trip with my roommate Julia when my phone vibrated. I looked at it and saw “Message to Chris Gregory: Can’t send.” That’s so weird, I thought. I haven’t sent a text message to Chris in over a year…why would this pop up now? Has it been trying to send to Thailand all year and just now realized it couldn’t?

Just then, Julia’s phone received a message from me: “Just landed”. Huh. This was a bit more concerning, since I hadn’t had Julia pick me up from the airport recently, and my phone would have had ample opportunity to resend. What was going on here?

My phone soon vibrated again. It was a message from a friend that said “Home where? St Louis?” and then immediately after another friend texted “I think you meant to send that to someone else.”

Oh dear. Ohhh dear oh dear. Obviously, this was not a small, isolated event. I started getting nervous about the possibilities and the scope of the sitation – are people going get messages asking them to meet me somewhere? Teach a RS lesson? Commit me to attending a party? Then Julia raised me to a whole new level of concern when she said, “what if you texted your exes??” I laughed kind of shrilly and just hoped that my phone would have more decency than that.

Not even five minutes later I got a text from a past boyfriend. Who hadn’t spoken more than 5 sentences to me since we broke up. And of all of the things my deranged phone could have sent him, it sent him a text that asked if I wanted to meet up at his house later that evening.

I almost had to pull over to the side of the freeway so I wouldn’t literally die from embarrassment.

Days later I was still getting responses. One from my old bishop who gave me a hard time about forgetting my temple recommend yet again. Another from a friend who was really excited to go to dinner and a movie with me! and I had to awkwardly explain that I didn’t actually mean to send that invitation. I can only imagine what my ex-boyfriend must have thought when I propositioned him out of the blue. Obviously he was quite confused, but good-natured enough laugh it off with me, as were all of the bewildered people that responded to my mis-sent messages. But even though I am certainly embarrassed by those texts I know about, I am even more uncomfortable thinking about all of the texts that I have no idea were even sent. How many people are out there that received a random message from me that made no sense, didn’t respond to clarify, and now just think I’m crazy?

As a precaution, I think I might turn my phone off if I ever cross the Illinois border again.