Although he carefully rehearsed it for at least 45 minutes prior to leaving it, the message which UCB junior Alexander Zimmerman finally left for recently acquainted Sophomore Megan Johanssen was such a mess of malapropisms, ill-timed jokes, and sheer dumb misfortune that it would be clear to anyone but a child that the message was an attempt at scripting gone wildly awry.
After noticing her reading Lord Byron at Thai Basil Wednesday and striking up a casual conversation with her about the poet, in the course of which he learned that she hates eggplants, is an intended Rhetoric major, and was “heading to the RSF soon,” Zimmerman decided that he would call her the following day. He finally called at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday GAA perhaps choosing a time she was unlikely to be home GAA after 45 minutes of pacing, rehearsing, and shadow-boxing. He had hoped to leave the following message:
“Hi, Megan, this is Alex GAA we met at Thai Basil a few days ago. No, wait, or was it last night? Anyhoo, I was really hoping to catch you at home, just to let you know that there’s this sale on eggplants at Safeway. Heh heh, just joking. But if you want to go and have coffee sometime, my number is (510) 841-5141. See you, bye.”
Instead, what came out was the following hopeless rant (Zimmerman’s thoughts are shown in brackets):
“Hi, Basil, this is Alex. [Don’t panic. Not a big deal.] Um, I mean, ‘Hi Megan.’ Just wanted to ‘spice’ things up a bit, I guess. Heh heh. [Cute. Good save.] So why aren’t you home? [WHAT THE FUCK!] I mean, uh, since we met only last night, I thought [Stop talking now] maybe we could go to Safeway or something. [Hang up now. Hang up now] But if you don’t want to call me, I understand. [Ironically desirable. Shut spit-hole anyhow.] Um. OK Bye. [Why? Why?]”
Zimmerman claims to have been thrown off by the extra beep after the outgoing message. He has since changed his number, and now carefully avoids the Durant Food Court.
