More Evidence of My Dorkiness

I feel like Bob and Doug McKenzie right now: I'm delighted to have thought up a topic.

The topic for today's blog post is Telephone Phobia.  I believe I have telephone phobia.

Hang on a second while I grab a beer.  Thanks.  I'll try to keep this under two minutes reading time.

If you click the link above you'll go to Wikipedia where they will tell you that people with phone phobia are afraid that they will "fail to respond appropriately in a telephone conversation."  I buy that.

I can tell you I'm afraid that the pressure of having to talk to somebody on the phone will stress me out so much that my thoughts will fly out of my head and I'll be left babbling out dorky, senseless mumbo jumbo.  The person on the other end will have no recourse but to be mean to me and make it utterly apparent that they think I'm a total freak.  Then they will hang up on me without addressing the subject of the phone call (not that they could tell what the subject was)

Has this ever actually happened to me?  Not that I can recall - but if it did I would definitely try to blank that out.

So if I absolutely must call someone I try to do it when I'm pretty sure no one's home.  That way I can plan what I'm going to say and maybe even write myself a script for the voicemail.  So sad.

Then, if my plan works really well I can leave a call back number where I'm pretty sure I won't be so that they'll get voicemail too and I won't have to answer the phone.  That way I can deal with the information they left me in my own time and plan the next round of phone tag.  I can't always do that though.

Then there's the possibility that I might be calling at an inconvenient time and bother someone.  I'm not fond of that either.  Of course, they don't have to answer.

Oddly enough I have no problem calling someone for work.  Don't think twice about it.  I will even call people multiple times if they haven't got back to me and I have no other work to do.

Why am I such a dork?  I really don't know.  It's difficult and unfortunate.  Still, there are worse things.

By the way, I didn't really grab a beer.  That was just a nod to Bob and Doug.  Here's a clip below if you're unfamiliar with them.