What The Fox Says - Wrong Numbers Vs Wrong Texts

Like a lot of people, I've had a cellphone (or smartphone) for most of my adult life. I got my first real phone (a Nokia 5165 - if you're a certain age or older, you'll remember those) in 2002. I started texting a year later.

Back then, I made more calls than I sent text messages. But, as more phones began to come equipped with keyboards and people started getting unlimited texting plans, that slowly changed.

Even though I now text (and FB msg, Snapchat, etc) way more than I make phone calls, I've decided I'd much rather have a wrong call than a wrong text.

The reason?

With a wrong number you know almost immediately that it's a wrong number. if someone calls me looking for a woman, they'll know pretty quick they got a wrong number. Or, if you call a business and the person who answers doesn't identify that you've called that business, there's a good chance that you called the wrong number.

But, with wrong texts, sometimes it takes a few minutes to realize you are messaging the wrong person. I'll illustrate this with a couple stories.

Story One...

A few weeks ago, I started getting texts from someone I did not know. The first message was about a damaged tree that the sender needed help removing. But, before I could send out a message explaining he was messaging the wrong person, the sender sent me a slew of additional messages.

The really strange part was that the sender had a phone number that was one number off from mine.

Eventually, "Pete" saw the messages I responded with and realized I was not who he was trying to reach.

As for the number, he thought RECIPIENT was where he was supposed to type his number, but when he typed it, he screwed up and typed mine instead. *UGH*

Story two...

I had a DJ friend who was always getting different phone numbers. Not sure why. Probably did not want to know.

One Christmas I decided to text what I thought was his current number. The conversation went down like this:

ME: Merry Christmas!

DJ: Same to you!

ME: How ya been?

DJ: Can't complain. How about you?

ME: Not bad. You coming up to spin on New Years Eve at the club?

DJ: What?

ME: XXXX (the owner) has you booked for New Year's Eve, right?

DJ: Who is this?

ME: Cooper. This is XXXXX, right?