We met at a Bar/Bat Mitzvah party.  We played this game where we held hands, and then spun each other around in circles until one of us let go, throwing both of us painfully backwards into the metal benches that were behind us.  Once recovered, she asked me to slow dance.  It wasn’t my first slow dance with a girl, but it was the most awesome.  She held me really close and we danced cheek to cheek.  It made me feel things in places that I had never felt before, and I absolutely wanted more of it.  She gave me her phone number, assuming that I had talked to a girl on a phone before.  Well, I hadn’t.

I wrote a script for myself before calling.  I needed to write down potential conversation topics because I could literally feel the awkward silence even before I picked up the phone.  This was before we had to type in the area code first when making local calls, I think.  I nervously picked up the phone and punched in the phone number slowly.  7..7..1 ..7..4..8..8.  (That’s not her number anymore.)  She picked up and said, “hi.”  “Hi!” I said.  I looked down at my notes.  “So Clinton sure likes to have sex, huh?” I said.  I didn’t even have anything about Bill Clinton anywhere in my notes.  What?  Why would that be the first thing that I would say…to anybody?  “You’ve never talked to a girl on the phone before, have you?”  she said.  I answered with the same answer I gave her after she would later ask me if she was the first girl I ever kissed.  “No way, I’ve done this plenty of times.”  Then, ten minutes of silence followed.  “So Clinton, huh?”

Clinton is long gone from the White House, but I am still petrified of phones; even when talking to friends or family members.  Phone conversations make me very uncomfortable, and I don’t think I will ever outgrow that.  The only thing that makes me more uncomfortable is talking to my parents on Facebook® (previously AOL Instant Messenger®).  Whoever you are, I would much rather text you or just talk to you in person.  I’m not anti-social; I’m just anti-phone call.