Did you drop your message onto my phone? Or did you drop your phone onto my voice mail? Or was there no dropping involved at all?

These are the kinds of questions that pop into my head when I’m listening to someone’s message. Obviously, there are many more questions besides those basic ones.

Were they wearing clothes when they left the message? Were they thinking of what they were going to say, or were they just letting their mouth do the thinking for both of them?

How far was their phone from their lips as they said the words that now echoed forth from the voicemail? Mere centimeters, or a larger unit of measurement?

Was their breath bad? Had they recently had an onion milkshake? Was I glad that I could not smell them as I listened? Or was their breath as beautiful as a kitten stuffed with rainbows, and not being able to smell that rainbow kitten was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me?

How many other people were within earshot of them leaving the message? Could this message have been pre-heard by someone else? Is that person someone the messager knows? Someone we both know? A complete stranger? Is that person even still alive today? Is that person bigger than a breadbox? Is that person Milton Bradley?

Would it have been quicker for the message-leaver to write me a letter instead? Would it have been quicker for her to walk over to me and speak the words directly into my ear canal, the flow of the thoughts uninterrupted by microphones and compression algorithms and wireless transmittal and cheap little speakers? Would it have been a more exciting message, or a more boring message?

How many seagulls saw her leaving the message?

If I had never listened to the message, would it have left a sound? What is the sound of one message dropping?

If you have any answers, please let me know through commenting. Voice mails are not an acceptable method of answer submission today. Maybe in the not-to-distant future, when we are all cybertronic robots busy destroying puny humans. But not today, sorry.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 4:50 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.