What Up!

This is a true story. Honest. I am not kidding. (Nobody could make this up.)

A few years ago, Amy, Lisa, Carolyn, and I went to a cross-stitching retreat in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We stayed in a nice hotel near the cross-stitch shop.

After the first day’s activities, we were back at the hotel stitching the night away on our projects and solving all the world’s problems when Amy received a text message. She read it, and then started laughing and we, thinking it was a text from one of her kids, wanted to know what was funny and she said, “This,” holding up the phone. “He has the wrong number.”

She tried to read us the text message, but she kept laughing so hard that she couldn’t get the words out. So we passed the phone around and read the message. This is what it said, and again, I am not even kidding:

What up my nig. I got 50 so hit me back.

Okay, so four old(er) ladies reading this text. Please bear in mind that it was late at night, we had a sleep deficit, and we had no basis for this experience. We laughed, but then I said, “What does this even mean? Hit me back? I got 50? Is he buying something?” Long ago I had a moonlighting job at a Relay for hard-of-hearing people to talk to hearing people on the phone; I once relayed a call between a shopper and a purveyor of an illicit substance, so I wondered if this caller wanted to make a similar purchase. Who knew? And “hit me back?” What??

There was some discussion of texting back a smart-alecky reply, but Amy didn’t want someone who now had her phone number to get mad, so we just made up things we would say if we did text back, and cracked ourselves up even more.

We were still laughing and Carolyn – who was sitting the farthest away from the rest of us – was still holding the phone when it rang. Carolyn looked at it and told Amy, “It’s a XXX area code.”

Amy said, “That’s the area code from the text. Oh! It’s the same person!”

I said, “Answer it!”

Carolyn leapt from her seat and practically threw the phone at Lisa, who said, “I’m not answering it!” and dumped it in my lap. I was sitting next to Amy; she looked like a deer in headlights.

The phone was still ringing, so I accepted the call and said, “Joe’s Bar and Grill” in a peppy voice.  There was a l-o-n-g pause, then a voice said, “Who?”

“Joe’s Bar and Grill. How may I help you?”

A pause, then the voice said in a rather “uh-oh” tone, “Uuuuuhhh, I have the wrong number,” and the caller hung up.

Then we speculated on exactly what the caller must be thinking about having sent that text, especially if he really did intend to hook up for a buy/sell scenario. Then we laughed some more. Amy was still a little tense, but she received no more calls or texts.

We may possibly have stayed up too late already at that point, and the phone call sent us over the edge. We could not stop laughing. We thought of a bazillion funny things to say to this person, and every time we would finally calm down, someone would think of another reply or someone would say, “What up, my nig?”or “hit me back” and we would start laughing all over again.

Yeah, well, we are old(er) and not very hip. But, really,  “What up my nig”?? Who says that? Not old(er) ladies at a cross-stitch retreat, that’s for sure! And who would text that to a number without making quite sure he had the right number? Oh. My. Goodness. We were dying.

The next evening on our way back to our room after the retreat activities and supper, we spotted a man in the hotel lobby who looked like an ‘80s stereotypical pimp. Really! He looked just like a pimp from the movies in the 1980s. Once more, I am not kidding! I have no idea who this man was or why he was dressed in those clothes. Maybe he was going to a costume party, because surely no one would seriously dress like that in 2008 or 2009 (I hope). All I can tell you is that the minute the elevator door closed behind us, someone said, “Oh my goodness, did you see that guy? He is probably the one who texted Amy last night,” and the gales of laughter exploded again.

You can probably imagine the rest of our weekend. We did not calm down. We stayed up too late every night and laughed so loud and so hard we were kind of worried the hotel management would arrive to tell us that if we did not quiet down, we would be ejected into the night where we would be forced to sleep in Lisa’s Yukon.

We finished off the retreat, and we were not evicted from our hotel. We did, however, continue to laugh all the way home, and we still laugh every single time we think of that text, and I promise you that if you ever want to see grown women laugh until they are gasping for air, just walk up to any one of us and say, “What up!?”