Julieanne Leupold
My grandmother used to call me sponge because I had the kind of brain that remembered anything. I probably can still rattle off my address from second grade or some of those poems I had to memorize in eighth-grade English.
But I couldn’t tell you my best friend’s cell phone number. Or my father’s office number and extension.
My sudden lack of memory is not because I lost half my brain cells in some freak accident or anything — it is just a product of modern technology. More specifically cell phone technology.
With those unlimited capacity phone books, people don’t have to remember anyone’s number, just scroll down through the little digital-lettered names until you hit the jackpot. This portable phone book is great when you are on the go all day and need to use those numbers to be productive.
I’ve called in late to work while sitting in the parking lot that was supposed to be the freeway. I’ve made dinner reservations on the way to the restaurant and caught up with old friends on those free weekend deals.
Cell phones have become almost indispensable to the modern college coed. With the exception of that annoying once-a-class, forgot-to-turn-off-my-phone ring, cell phones are fabulous.
But alcohol and cell phones don’t mix.
Drunk dialing takes on a whole new form when the dialer doesn’t have to pluck seven digits in order out of their alcoholicly muddled brain. All they have to do is press two buttons and call everyone they have ever met at three in morning from the corner of Sunset and fill-in-the-blank street — just to say hi.
I can’t tell you how many phone calls I have received from many of my great friends babbling incoherently at some very loud decibel volume to just to say they loved me and — guess what — they were drunk. I usually figure that out before they share their intoxication secret.
The last drunk dialing message I received is still on my cell phone answering machine where a friend of mine from high school was singing loud and off-key to a song we had listened to on our senior-year road trip. She rattled off some nonsense about animals and deer in our laps before laughing, saying “I love you” and hanging up.
I saved the message fully intending to play it back to her later and watch her face slowly color with red.
But most women don’t just call their roommates or good friends when drunk dialing. They call boys.
Most have witnessed this, many of us have even done it, but somewhere in a moment of what seems like cathartic clarity you realize the reason you and your ex-boyfriend broke up or why your crush hasn’t noticed you. This sudden realization can’t be contained within your brain or your circle of friends who are around you.
You have to call him and share it.
Then you are left with the task of explaining what you can remember saying when he calls you the next day utterly confused.
Maybe the state shouldn’t be concerned with outlawing cell phones and driving — just cell phones and drinking.
March 21, 2002
