That Perfect Phone Call Feeling

By Bob Odenkirk | Guest Writer

“Hey, you know what? I think I just made the perfect phone call!”

We all know the feeling. It’s pride, sure. There’s a surfeit of sheer glee. Is there ecstasy? I wouldn’t go that far. But…close.

Immediately after you hang up you begin to go over the call in your mind. Was there a “hello”? Yes, a good, solid one. Both parties said and, more importantly heard, the “hello” from the other. Both expressed invitation and both felt invited to begin the yammering.

The meat of the call follows.

Then there was the small talk. Not too much, not too little. The warm-up, the good-hearted grease that loosened the sentiments, proposals, the intercourse that followed. Not sexual intercourse, please! The mental, the verbal, intercourse. This, dare I say it, fore-play (fore-talk?) cannot go on too long, lest the entire call descend into prattle…and the whole enterprise becomes imperfect.

The meat of the call follows. Ideas are proffered, batted about, countered. Allegations made? Sure, why not. This phone call has significance. It’s not a waste of time, not a side-bar, not a “chit-chat sesh”. For a call filled with minor distractions can never, would never, be labelled “perfect”, not even by a tele-phonical onanist of low intellect. Even to such a dim-witted self, such less-than-significant twaddle would not warrant the word “perfect”, much less have that classification find itself married to the words “phone” and “call.”

And what of the goodbye? Is there a “goodbye” at the end of this perfect phone call? Of course, there’s a “goodbye”. It is as necessary as the much-lauded “hello” that initiated this golden gab. The “goodbye” ripples clearly through the moments after the babbling brilliance that so recently warmed the ears of the participants.

Perfection.

So, yeah, we all know what it feels like. It feels great, this special occasion of nearly unicornal rarity, the diamond-studded chinwag, the perfect phone call. It feels simply great.

Now imagine how it feels when someone calls your perfect phone call “imperfect”, or even “criminal”. Your anger would know no bounds! The hackles would rise swiftly and violently. You would be hurt, appalled, and you, yes YOU, would strike back. For someone to take this away from you, the deep, deep comfort such a call consoles upon your very soul…it’s wrong. So wrong.

Such an accusation (of illegality, of criminal motives, of any imperfection) might even cause one to doubt whether the call that had taken place on a phone was, indeed, perfect in the first place. But it was. Your heartwind doesn’t lie. The warmth, the pride, the satisfaction, echoes clearly through the ages, and you know that all accusations will not stand unargued! “That call was perfect!” you say to yourself, you repeat to the heavens, yes, even over the deafening whap-whapping of helicopter blades! Lo, against any and all pushback, noise, conflagration!

‘Twas perfect, so perfect…it better be perfect, you cling desperately to this truth. I mean, you only get, like, three or four of these a month. ♦

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