something for cowards

Cheers to taking passive aggressiveness to new highs!

Here's an article about Slydial, a new service that lets you go directly to a person's voice mail and bypass the traditional ringing process.

Obviously, it's a victory for anyone who likes to dump a fling passively.

A similar option was part of our college phone system. I loved it, and used the service many times to tell professors when I'd be out of class. Or to tell the editors of our school paper that my articles would be late.

All of which were acceptable uses. An unacceptable use? Before one of our vacation periods, I had the brilliant idea to use the service to go directly to a crush's voice mail and tell him how much I liked him. You know, in case my plane crashed and we never saw each other or something.

I remember I just sat there by the phone -- soberly, as embarrassing as it sounds -- drafting the message and thinking how happy he'd be to hear it. Fortunately, the gods intervened and I didn't follow through with the plan.

Basically I hate anything related to relationships and phone calls. I've never been dumped in person, it's always been on the phone -- color me psychologically damaged -- and those memories of holding the phone and just bawling are some of the worst ever.

Would I have felt better or worse had it just been a voice message? I don't know.

Thoughts?