Ignorant Delight

I could almost feel the bristles of my thumb each time it touched the screen and slid upwards. Like the most uncomfortable feeling of a sip of coffee taken too quick. After the initial shock subsides, the tongue, recoiled in your mouth, unfolds, feeling the backs of your teeth only to be met with a sensation of a thousand little bristles now resting on its tip. I wondered if my thumb ever felt the same. Maybe it was angry, a quiet insubordinate. Beaten down, raw and uncomfortable from endlessly scrolling second by second. It didn’t matter if it was a book, the news, or just pictures, the task was the same…adjust the frame, scroll up to the bottom, back to the top. Day in and day out my thumbs insanely complex structure was reduced to a water turbine, but instead of churning water weight into energy, I reduced it to turning information into anxiety, stress, and eventual overload.

Still gripping my phone, I let my hand rest palm down on the inside of my thigh and shut my eyes. It was only six am, I thought to myself as the top of my head rested against the back of my driver’s seat. It was only six am on a Tuesday. I was barely starting my work day and I had already digested a hot conflict in Uzbekistan, a pre-teen child who had sued their parents over their social media finances, pictures of high-school friends children from their soccer practice over the weekend and even my ex-coworkers multitude of posts from her new influencer account which switched between learning to stand up for your own personal truth and skimpy bikini pictures. My phone vibrated against my leg, once…twice, three times. Now the emails were spilling in, these would be both work and the endless automated subscription emails which incessantly found their way to my account over and over again. I leaned forward, dropping my chin against my chest and casually flipped the phone over. My eyes skimmed through the alerts as I begin aggressively hit the X’ on each notification. My accountant, a new bid for work site, home listings meeting previous search criteria. I unlocked my phone to read the email from my accountant, which I was not exactly looking forward too, and as I did my eyes caught the red notification sign coming from Social Book (friend request alert), those were rare and far between at the ripe old age of twenty-nine.

I opened the notification and was taken to the profile and my eyes widened with disbelief. I was a little shocked, and to be honest nervous at the profile pictures eyes looking back at me. My back tightened up and I looked up from my phone to scan the parking spaces by my office as if someone cared about the fact that my high-school fling from twelve years ago had somehow found me on a social media site and then proceeded to casually request my friendship. I was a little confounded, but foolishly delighted and secretly flattered. She looked great and had barely aged at all. The profile picture was eloquent, one which pandered to both prospective job and dating sites alike. Debating whether to accept the request and wait or throw out a cheap “Wow! It’s been forever, how are you?!” I settled on more intel and decided to peruse her profile. In light of recent events the efforts of my tired thumbs and my accountants’ urgent email had been shuttered to the back of my thoughts. She had moved to Dayton? Really decided to try new scenery…and she never mentioned she had grown up in Dubai. Then I saw it. My eyes froze unblinking staring at her most recent post, my hand clenched the phone with embarrassment and again I nervously looked up and scanned the parking lot, but not with nervous excitement but akward shame.

My thumbs probably sighed with relief and chuckled to themselves as I read the post, “Heya SweEtz! Hope is good day! So Hot bY MyselF and playtime! WaNt to joIn in? Subscribe with me!? DM noW for a great time!” I stared at the post for far too long, my eyes becoming dry with lack of blinking before shutting off the screen and tossing the phone aside with so much abandon it could have doubled as dirty sock hurtling towards the hamper. I was embarrassed, and my face felt hot with shame and stupidity. I had been deduced to a blushing, boyish incarnation of my younger self simply by a picture and the idea, the thrilling secretive idea, that an old attractive crush had been searching for me and upon finding me urgently sent the request to what…? To pick things up? Catch up? No, I’d been shamefully duped by an automated bot with a fake picture, probably one of many, created by some chubby pimple faced teenager in a coffee shop in Pakistan. I glanced at my phone for a minute before turning off the engine and exiting the work truck. As a strange form of punishment for my humiliation I decided to leave the phone in my work truck. My accountant could wait, so could the news, the fit-fluencer’s, my best friend’s kids, and all the fake ex crushes too. I had work to do in the shop before hitting the road and some downtime before then wouldn’t hurt. I looked at the shop clock…it was 6:12…unbelievable. I actually felt relieved as I made my way into the dusty shop garage, but I couldn’t quite shake that humiliating feeling and the question? How did a bot know my crush from over a decade ago…these kids, theses algorithms were getting wild and downright intrusive. I feebly attempted to shake off my bewilderment, struggling more with the embarrassment, before collecting myself, straightening my posture and heading inside to make a pot of coffee.