you thought you knew me

He is too young to have learned to hate himself yet, but that seed is already there; given time, it will grow, and bear bitter fruit.

I rarely answer my telephone, often forget to check voicemail, and can take a shockingly long time to return phone calls. So sue me. The telephone is intrusive, especially for introverts, whose brains don’t switch gears all that quickly. When we’re deep in thought, a ringing telephone is like a shrieking alarm clock in the morning. And we often give bad phone—awkward, with pauses. We struggle without visual cues, and our tendency to ponder before we talk doesn’t play well on the telephone. Being stuck on a too-long call makes me want to chew off my own leg to escape. Sometimes, if I’m feeling devil-may-care, I’ll pick up calls from far-flung friends who want to catch-up, But I more often let them go to voicemail and then make a date (via email) for us to talk. My friends understand. Dislike of the phone is often presented as a moral failing. But honestly, it’s not the people on the phone we dislike, it’s the instrument of delivery.

It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.