Curious

A few weeks ago I was waiting for a friend at the local CVS store. I was standing outside on the sidewalk waiting for her to drive up and as I was waiting I received an interesting request from a passing stranger. A guy in a well-used SUV slowly rolled up to me with his arm extended from the window and a cell phone in his hand to ask, “Will you answer this phone call for me?” A little puzzled I questioned him, “why don’t you just call back the number after they hang up?” “The number says unavailable so I can’t call them back.” Ok, well that logic makes sense except I still don’t know why he is asking me to answer the call. If it’s someone he’s trying to avoid then why doesn’t he just ignore the phone call and let them leave a message? And if I did answer and they asked for him who’s to say I wouldn’t just hand the phone back over to him which would completely defeat the purpose of me answering. “Um, ok I guess,” was the answer I gave him. “never mind, they just hung up.” And away he drove. Perhaps this fellow wasn’t a master of disguise or possesses finesse at lying but it would seem that if an unavailable number kept calling your cell phone and never leaving a message you could simple answer the call the next time it rang and state that they had the wrong number, people frequently change their cell phone numbers so this would be a plausible excuse. What I really wonder is what was going through his mind? Did he think I would have a conversation with this person on his behalf? Did he think I would lie to them for him? That’s a little presumptuous. For all he knew I could have answered the phone and said, “Well he’s right here next to me but was afraid to answer the phone because he didn’t know the number which makes me think he’s trying to avoid you.” I could have ratted him out to whoever was on the other line. I could have made up a story that he was attacked by rabid bunnies and was so horribly disfigured that the doctors could only identify him by the wax in his ear. I guess we’ll never know what I would have done since that person decided it was time to hang up.