Everything That Will Happen After I Silence My Phone at the Movie Theatre
- I’ll miss an important work Slack that will be really annoying to deal with later that night.
- One of my old social-media posts will go viral, but it will stop trending before I get out, and I will have missed the fun flurry of notifications.
- My ex will call to confess that he never stopped loving me and can’t live without me, but will only tell me this if I answer, and will not leave a voice mail or ever call me again.
- The apocalypse will begin and I won’t know until I step outside and am raptured.
- My dog will learn how to text, and I will miss her first message to me.
- The boss from the dream job I didn’t get three years ago will e-mail me to tell me that she realized she made a huge mistake and wants to bring me on board immediately at double the salary, but only if I sign the offer by 10 P.M. (The movie ends at 10:05.)
- I will forget to turn my phone back on right away and will accidentally live a much calmer, better life for a few hours.
- The customer-service representative from whom I’ve been waiting for a callback for fifty-three hours will call me back one minute before I turn my phone back on, and I will have to wait fifty-three more hours to get another callback.
- I will leave my dog’s text unanswered for a bit, and in the meantime she will text my husband, who will answer right away.
- It will happen and I will be the only one not posting about it.
- A doctor will call me with test results that, because of HIPAA, can’t be related in a voice mail. She says that she’ll try me again on Monday, but her tone of voice sounds sort of grim, right?
- My dog will create a TikTok account and go viral for a post about me not answering her texts, and then will go live to announce that my husband has replaced me as her favorite person. All the commenters will support her and dox me.
- Everyone I have ever known will find themselves on their deathbeds, and I will miss their calls asking if they can leave me everything they own. Because I don’t answer, they will leave their wealth and belongings to my No. 1 enemy and will all die hating me.
- My phone will be mad at me.
- As the lights come on in the theatre, I will get arrested for animal neglect because of my dog’s viral TikTok and I will be sentenced to life in prison.
- Not one person will call, text, e-mail, message, or otherwise try to contact me for two hours and forty-four minutes. ♦
