#8 WORD SERIES - BUTT-DIAL

I’m trying to imagine it, the human that a thousand years from now finds my April 18, 2023 journal page that tells of a 3:34am whoosing sound signaling a call to my husband’s phone.

Only one whoosh followed by a voiced name. Indistinguishable. Of course.

“Was that Jeannie?” I asked. I thought I heard her name. We are all awake, husband, dog, and I.

“It was some butt-call,” said he.

“But,” said I, turning over, thinking, Well enough—go back to sleep. I tried.

“But, what if she . . .”

I was up, then down on my hands and knees on my husband’s side of the bed searching in darkness for his phone now fallen to the floor by the sweep of his hand’s attempt to help, phone landing face down on carpet somewhere between an end table and bed.

“It’s nothing, Barb.”

“Not good enough.”

Phone, dog, and I move to a different room. It wasn’t our friend calling, it was our daughter, Kim (whose phone Message Notification is silenced).

No question, she butt-dialed her dad’s phone.

But wait. What if that call was some sort of attempt to reach us? My phone is off for the night. Kim is traveling between New Mexico and New York. If she managed to get on last night’s Red-Eye after her flight the night before had been cancelled, if she made it to JFK, if she’s in an Uber right now headed for Long Island . . . or should have been . . . or is in trouble, and is trying to signal us by butt-dialing her Dad because she can’t reach me. My phone is off. What if (it doesn’t matter, all those steps that make it safe) the Uber driver is a madman? What if something has happened to her husband, her son, her daughter, her dog, her . . What if she is desperately trying to signal us that she needs help?

Yeah, well, I just finished reading the New Zealander’s novel, “Birnam Wood.”  I know now how cell phones can be tampered with! Our German grandfather clock strikes four. I make coffee. I am so beyond more sleep.

This is what love can do to a parent at 3:34am. Well, to some parent. The one who first worried her friend could be in trouble, checked, and learned it was her daughter’s call, then sent a message to confirm that all is well, “You messaged Dad. You okay?”

“Ding!”

“Sooo sorry!!” Kim wrote, having received my message. “I butt-dialed dad by accident. Was kind of hoping it didn’t ring. I was on the way home from jfk and I butt dialed dad. Home now!” The attending emoji is of a crazy face.

My coffee is hot. My daughter has climbed into her bed meaning to recover some of the sleep that failed her flying through the night from Albuquerque to New York City. I’m wondering about some human who in a thousand years finds my journal jottings, and sees the term, “butt-dial.”

Has the latest Generative AI controller’s chip finally been imbedded in this human form driven, some centuries ago, by three pounds of brain circuitry problem-solving, poem-writing, calculating, space-searching, beauty awareness, music-making, information questing, and perhaps a soul, but now relieved by artificial means of all but a brain stem supporting automatic functions? Its heart beats, lungs breath, digestion occurs, and nerves respond.  

Does the now near-brainless form touch a particular fingernail, or spot on a wrist, signaling the chip, calling for information concerning strange words on what we call paper: phone, flying, jfk, and “butt-dialed”? Wait! The human form is curious! This is good.

A word for the day: “Butt-dial” a transitive verb, c. 2005 Slang

         To place an unintended call from a mobile phone – as by sitting on a phone placed in a back pocket when the phone is not in use; to unintentionally call (someone) on a cell phone in one's back pocket as a result of buttons being pressed accidentally.

“Butt-dial” Noun: c. 2008. Cambridge English Dictionary

            A phone call made unintentionally by sitting or pressing on their phone while it is in their pocket. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you – it was a butt-dial.”

 “Cops in Staffordshire, England easily nabbed two burglars . . . after one of the suspects mistakenly butt-dialed the emergency number 999 during an alleged break-in.” Toronto (Canada) Sun