Hi. My Name Is Jenny, And I Am A Phonophobiac

Today I was reading one of my favorite bloggers, Mighty Maggie, and it just struck me that there are so many similarities between us, we could really almost be Twins Separated At Birth.

1. She is a creative person

2. Married to a techno-geek

3. Is DEEPLY passionate about the correct use of grammar and punctuation

4. Feels that their Roomba is their pet. (I strongly feel that our TIVO is the 6th member of our family, and will frequently give my husband updates on its behavior when he gets home from work, especially if I feel he needs to discipline it. As in, “Dude, I think you need to have some words with the TIVO because it was really giving me some LIP today.”

5. And she does NOT like to talk on the phone. She is currently trying to hire someone to fill her position before she goes on maternity leave, and describes it like this: “But there is a reason I posted the job online and only left my EMAIL ADDRESS. There is nothing in the ad implying that they should google my company until they find our phone number, call me up and interrupt my very important blog reading schedule to ask me stupid annoying questions about “what I’m looking for”. Send me a resume like everyone else! GOD! I swear, if these people knew me, they’d know they’ve automatically lost any chance they have just by trying to get me to talk on the phone.”

Now I don’t know if she has the same issues as I do, but speaking for myself I can honestly say that having to talk on the phone, or even worse, having to call people on the phone, is so terrifying to me that I would rather do ANYTHING, including cleaning out the cat boxes or performing stand-up comedy, than have to do it.

This is how bad it is. I’ve known my husband and his family since I was 12. We’ve been together since I was 17 (I am now 34). We’ve been married for 10 years. For 20 of the past 22 years, our families lived across the street from each other. My younger brother and his younger sister used to have a pact that if neither of them had married by the time she turned 30, they would marry each other.

And still, to this day, if I have to call him when he is at his parents’ house and run the risk of talking to one of my in-laws who I’ve known for 22 years but who are not my husband, I almost can’t do it. I get a stomach ache, and I start to hyperventilate, and I want to cry.

That is why it was a joyful day here at the Ryan household when both he and I finally got cell phones, because now I can call and talk to him directly, wherever he is, and not have to talk to anyone else. On the list of Foundational Cornerstones That Keep Our Marriage Solid, that ranks right up there at the top. Also on the list would be the day we got TIVO (since some of us do not share the remote (aka, “The Power”) with the rest of us, and insist on watching upwards of 5 shows at a time, meaning that there is A Lot of channel flipping, and so we consequently never get back to the original show until after it’s already returned from commercial break, causing us to miss VITAL seconds of screen time featuring David Boreanaz of “Bones”). Or the day that my husband finally, finally “got” that it wasn’t a matter of my not trying hard enough, or that I wasn’t paying attention, I really DO NOT KNOW how to get places on my own, even if I’ve been there before when someone else was driving, and no I cannot just mentally reverse the directions you’ve given me to get back from my dress rehearsal down in Buckhead, I need you to write those out for me as a separate list.

Here’s a quick summary of me and my relationship to the telephone.

People I Can Talk To On The Phone Without One Shred Of Nerves Or Anxiety

1. My husband

2. My mom

3. My dad

4. My coach, Lynne

People Where It’s Getting Better But I Still Have To Remind Myself To Keep Breathing As I’m Dialing The Phone And I Still Might Pass Out At Any Minute

1. My brother

2. My sister-in-law

3. My other sister-in-law

4. Ana, who I’ve known since I was 4

5. Jen, who I’ve known since I was 10

Sorry Dude, But You’re Just Gonna Have To Send Me An Email Or Talk To Me In Person
Everyone else on the planet

For most of my life I’ve thought that this was a problem that only I had, and that I’d just have to bear the stigma of being different and misunderstood alone, but then a couple of years ago I met someone else who felt the same way. And sure, we like each other as people, and we have some common interests, yada, yada, yada, but I truly feel that the strength of our friendship lies in the fact that we made a solemn pact to never call each other on the phone.

So thank goodness for text messaging. At least I feel that way. He may not, since basically every single text message I send him is some version of the word “Fuckernutters”.

(Important Side Note: About a year ago my husband and The Gamers were playing, I believe, the second “Baldur’s Gate”. My husband was playing as a swarthy Scottish dwarf who would randomly blurt out crazy exclamations, one of which, to the best of our ability to figure out, was the word “Fuckernutters”. Which is of course one of the best words ever created by man, and immediately became our new life mantra. Because honestly? It’s been over a year now, and we have yet to discover a situation to which “Fuckernutters” is not, at least in some way, an appropriate response. And which led one of The Gamers to remark that, “It’s not Saturday night without Fuckernutters.” So true.)

So my friend is always receiving random text messages that say things like, “Happy Fuckernutters”, or “Happy Fuckernutters Eve.” I haven’t yet come up with a good name for The Day After Fuckernutters (or, “Sunday”). (Poor guy. It’s not easy being my friend.)

(And it’s really not better if you’re my husband, as I mainly use text messaging to inform him of the number of times the cats have barfed in a given day, or to tell him that, “Well, I’ve broken the Internet again.”)

So there you go. There is my deep dark secret. And now that you’ve shared these special moments with me, I feel that really there is only one way to adequately express the work we’ve done here together.

“Fuckernutters!” (And I really mean that, from the bottom of my heart.)