Goddamn it, how do I know you're not dead if you don't call?

The BBQ Pit
1

So here it is, 4:20 in the morning. Talked to BF at 1 and he said “We’re almost done playing Axis and Allies, I’ll be over soon.” “How soon?” “I dunno, soon.” Well, his “soon” is pretty loose if there’s nothing specific we’re doing (he’s not one of those chronic late people, but he doesn’t always think to call if he ends up doing more stuff than he expects and there’s no time he’s supposed to be here. He knows it bothers me, and he tries to remember, but he often forgets.) So I go to bed. He often comes in late - he knows how to turn the alarm off, and usually I don’t worry about it.

So I wake up and look at the clock, and it’s 3. Hmm. I call him a few times and nobody answers, but I know he’s been having trouble with his phone and it might not be ringing or it might be on the charger. He’s probably with all the guys, but I don’t have any of their numbers. So I call a few more times. And a few more times. After a while it starts going directly to voice mail and I’m thinking, maybe the phone is in a shattered pile of electronics somewhere in the bloody, firey mess that used to be his car?

Well, 4 comes and goes. I’m weighing getting dressed and driving the route he’d have taken to my house and seeing if his place is dark or not, versus calling hospitals first. Decide to wait until 4:30 and call hospitals. Remember at 4:20 that his business phone will be in the phone book online even though it’s not in the paper ones yet.

He answers in a phony British accent and keeps it up through the whole call. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you, I say. Embarassing to say, my phone isn’t working and I forgot your phone number and didn’t think about the house phone. Cheerio!”

My god, I could kill him. I swear, I’m marching right back into that bedroom and turning off his side of the heating blanket.

Seriously, how inconsiderate could you get! This from the guy who once called me 30 times in 45 minutes once because he’d just seen Rosemary’s Baby and when I turned my phone off to watch a movie with my folks he thought the devil had gotten me.

I’m sure he’s crawling with embarassment and remorse right now, quite honestly. I still want to slap the living shit out of him.

But at least he’s not one of those non-punctual people. :wink:

Okay, thanks, I think I can go back to sleep now. Whew! I feel so much better. Thanks for reading this lame-ass rant so I can drain out my pissed-off and get some shut-eye.

2

Why the urgent need to stay in contact with him? If he’s anything like me, it may make him suicidal.

3

Seconded. I’m not saying that the OP is being too clingy, but my GF and I both have phone anxiety issues. Meaning that she always needs to be able to get in contact me, while I on the otherhand will neglect my phone more and more for the higher amount of missed calls (i.e. if I have 1-2 missed calls I call her back immediately… although if I have 20 missed calls I must shut my phone off and sit somewhere quiet for a certain amount of time).

4

Don’t worry, my boyfriend’s the same. Not chronically unpunctual, just never accounts for the wait in between buses and trains (sometimes up to fifteen minutes). This wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t so hard to make plans with in the first place.

The incidence of his poor planning have been significantly reduced since I threw a huge hissy fit and threatened to break up with him. In my defence, it was making things really hard on me - I’m a logical person and make plans quickly with everyone but him, and I was in the middle of final year exams. Now he knows to call.

As for number of call issues - if I have one or two missed calls, I assume they’re trying to get in touch with me. If I have ten missed calls from one person, I assume it’s a damn emergency.

On a side note, Dad once forgot that I had taken the car to school not long after I got my license. I left my phone in my locker and it danced all over the shelf as he desperately called me trying to find out if the car had been stolen. I called him back frantic, thinking that Nan had died or something, but he had just forgotten I’d taken the car.

5

Christ, what was life like before cellphones?

6

Probably fine because we didn’t rely on them so much. I learned just how much I rely on them when my boyfriend lost his. I resorted to email because he was always working (stage manager, so I can’t call him) at nights and normally I just SMS him. Then I learnt that in order for the no-cells thing to work, you have to specify a place to meet, not just ‘I’ll be here, call me when you get here and I’ll meet you.’

7

That wasn’t your boyfriend, that was me! Your boyfriend’s in my freezer. Bwa ha ha ha haaa.

8

My dad has a commute of just over an hour. When he’s ready to leave work, he calls home. Mom gets antsy about 50 minutes later. Dad is slowly learning that if something happens (like a car accident not involving him which blocks traffic for miles) he should call home and let Mom know what’s going on.

Other story. This summer, my mother attempted to cut her finger off with a spatula. (OK, it wasn’t on purpose, but she still ended up with 8 stitches). Dad was supposed to be on his way home soon. So we called the house 3-4 times, and the cell phone 4-5 times, leaving messages more often than not, while figuring out which place we were taking Mom for treatment. (We started out at the local Urgent Treatment Center, who sent us to the Emergency Room).

By the time Dad finally called, we were getting antsy about him. Come to find out, he’d forgotten his cell phone at home, and therefore hadn’t heard any of the calls. When he got home and realized we weren’t there and had left in a hurry, he immediately located his cell phone, listened to the messages there, and called us to find out what was going on.

In response to the question of what we would have done without cell phones? We probably would have called the house three times. Once at the Urgent Treatment place, once when we got to the ER, and once when we knew for sure that surgery wouldn’t be neccessary. (Oh, and maybe once when we got ready to leave the ER and go get Mom’s prescriptions). We would have worried a lot less about Dad not answering the phone, because we wouldn’t have had that feeling that Dad should have heard 3-4 phone calls by now, why isn’t he calling us back?

9

I remember what it was like before answering machines. In those good ole days, you couldn’t even leave a message! Oh, the humanity!

10

You’ve never done the “they said they’d be here an hour ago…they must be dead on the freeway” anxiety attack?

My ex-husband - in the pre-cell phone days - used to pull this on me. I’d go to bed at 11 and fall asleep, expecting him home about 1:00. I’d realize at about 2 he wasn’t in bed. By 3 I’d worked myself into a state convinced the police were going to knock on my door to identify the body, wasn’t sleeping, had to go to work the next day - knew he had to go to work the next day. At 5 am he’d come home, and call in sick.

In recollection, it doesn’t help that knowing what I know now I suspect he was off boinking someone else while I was concerned about him being in the hosptial.

11

I was thinking the same thing. I was commuting long before these things were ubiquitous, and surprisingly, whenever I was delayed, no one had a heart attack waiting for me. Even now, most of my commute is underground. If, nay when I get stuck between stations, I still can’t phone. Fortunately, my wife isn’t that clingy, but that’s by choice. If she were, we never would have lasted this long.

This rant gets a -2.

12

There is a world of difference between freaking out over someone taking an extra half hour or whatever to get home from work and someone saying they will be home about one AM and still not being home at 4. Night is different. Half the people on the road are drunk. If you have car trouble, there’s fewer people around to help. You don’t have to be clingy to worry when someone is late into the wee hours of the morning. Before cell phones. you’d just be annoyed about them not calling, instead of about them not picking up the phone.

13

I doubt it. You seem a bit clingy.

14

Because he was three hours late and it was the dead of night? Well, that and I’d been sleeping and woken up - if I’d just been awake I’m sure I wouldn’t have been nearly as worried, but haven’t you ever been a lot easier to worry when you’ve been asleep and hear a noise or something? I’ve once or twice been sure there was something in my bedroom, breathing ever so quietly… I mean, it’s not like you think that when you’re awake, but when you wake up and somebody’s three hours late on a Friday night with all the drunks out, yeah, you call them! Also, his car has been unreliable lately and something might have happened with that, etc.

The BF is the world’s most connected person. He’s got a freaking Hiptop and is usually easier to IM than most people are to yell at across a room. If it’s 4 in the morning and the guys are playing a game, there’s no reason for him not to answer his phone. It’s not a question of being clingy, it’s that it’s unusual. If you call me six times and I don’t answer I probably left the phone on the charger or on the bedside table and it vibrated itself off again - generally, not so him.

He came in around 7 AM with absolutely no memory of me calling him, they’d been that drunk. Very unusual for him - he’s a cheap date and gets tipsy easily but really drunk rare, and I don’t think I remember him ever being drunk enough to forget things. So 1) it’s a good thing he didn’t drive, but 2) I had good reason to be worried! Hell, I don’t even know if anybody the State Troopers would call has my phone number!

I mean, hell, people do die in car wrecks, people do go with their friends to the hospital and don’t think to call you or don’t want to leave long enough to use a cell phone, people do have sudden heart attacks and keel over dead. I once came home from school in 7th grade to find nobody at home for three hours until my half-brother came over and told my my dad had had a heart attack and was having bypass surgery in the morning. I hadn’t looked at the answering machine! These days cell phones ought to prevent that sort of thing, which is why if you’re worried you call!

15

I think the OP’s boyfriend sounds like an asshole.

16

And there is a big freaking difference between commuting by train and being three hours late at 4 AM when you live ten minutes away and are generally accessible day and night.

17

She seems A LOT clingy. I’d be pissed at the guy for not being home when he said, but I wouldn’t be engaging in paranoid scenarios or even debating whether to call the hospitals after just a couple hours. Jesus woman, you keep worrying like that you’re going to give yourself a heart attack before the year’s over.

18

My brother went for 2 years with no contact. And couldn’t understand what we were so concerned about.

19

Yeah. And then it happened. I’ll tell you how you know if someone’s dead - you’ll get a call. That’s how I knew my then- spouse had been hit by a runaway trailer and was in hospital.

Make sure your number is in his wallet. Then go to sleep. Unless he’s driving a winding road in a forested mountainous area, it’s unlikely any mishap involving him will go unnoticed.

20

I’m guessing he was ignoring your calls, since he was with his friends and didn’t want to be that guy who had to constantly interrupt things to talk to his clingy girlfriend every ten minutes, and then eventually turned his phone off.

What are you trying to accomplish by hounding him like this? Demanding he tell you exactly when he’s coming over and then calling him again and again as soon as that time has passed is treating him like a child. People don’t like to be treated like children. Assuming he’s dead whenever you lose contact with him for more than 15 seconds is letting your own irrational anxieties rule your life. Don’t do that. You can’t prevent a (highly unlikely) accident, all you will do is squash his feelings of equality and autonomy in the relationship.