Okay, all of y'all are going to want to puke at this and you'll be thanking GOD that it wasn't you. Even you atheists out there.
Brace yourself...
I not only outed myself (I think), I revealed another scary secret about myself: I talk to myself when I'm alone driving in the car. It's a helluva long commute to and from work, and sometimes I have a lot on my mind. Music works sometimes, but other times, I just need to vocalize my thoughts, set them in order and make them make sense to myself. What comes out sounds a bit like a monologue you'd hear on a podcast/audioblog.
I find the fact that I do this quite embarrassing to begin with, but it's harmless enough, right? I can talk about any old thing I please, as loud as I please, get it off my chest and get it out of my system. It's a good stress reliever. Wonderful.
So anyhow, I was driving home the other day from work and I had attended a workshop on Queer Positive Spaces, which is like sensitivity training for working within a LGBTQ-pro environment. This sparked my imagination and creativity and I started putting thoughts together. What about swingers? How, if at all, would they fit under this umbrella? So I started on my monologue. It lasted a good while, covering a wide array of issues in what I felt was a coherent and organized manner and wrapped it up nicely when I pulled into the driveway. I'm getting things gathered up to head into the house and happen to glance down at my cell phone which was plugged into my handsfree headset (earphones weren't in, but the mic was clipped to my lapel).
The screen was lit. It had accidentally dialed my VERY VANILLA best friend since childhood and had been online for 2 minutes and 47 seconds.
I hung it up and literally threw the blasted contraption away from me like it was on fire. My hands started to shake and my stomach clenched. Oh. My. God. WTF have I done? So for 2:47, my poor friend got an earful of some very um...enlightening...conversation. I found a pair of balls and called her back immediately, knowing that delaying it would only make it seem worse. I lied my ass off, telling her that what she heard was a podcast recording that I was listening to on the speaker (recorded from the workshop I attended earlier that day, conveniently), and I must have accidentally dialed her number and that's what she heard.
Okay people...give it to me straight. How believable does that sound? I WAS at a workshop that fit nicely into my explanation. It's a quasi-reasonable explanation as long as she doesn't look up the particulars of my phone and find out that it doesn't have this kind of capability. And of course, being an extreme vanilla, she WANTS to believe me.
Here's the catch: she had 2 minutes and 47 seconds to recognize my voice. Do you think the desire to believe me might be enough to overcome what her ears told her? The voice might've sounded like me, but the "me" she knows would NEVER say the things I was saying.
Sympathy cards welcome.