I got a text one random day from someone asking if I recognized the number.
“No,” I answered.
A second text quickly followed: could they send me a picture, maybe I’d recognize them. Curious and already suspicious, I said okay—just to see where this was headed.
Next thing I knew, we were chatting on WhatsApp. Betty sent me a picture—a very pretty girl, along with a neat little bio: 43, divorced, living in California.
But something smelled off. The picture wasn’t just a selfie—it was a photo of a woman taking a selfie, like someone had taken a snapshot of a stranger mid-pose. I thought, if she just snapped this, why not send the selfie itself? Hmmm. Red flag.
Then came the next line. She told me she was from France.
“Wow,” I replied, playing along. “Coincidence—my favorite singer is Stella Jang. A lot of her songs are in French.”
I left that statement dangling like bait, curious how she’d respond. Anyone with a clue would’ve noticed the oddity—Stella Jang is South Korean, not French. But Betty replied two minutes later without skipping a beat:
“My favorite singer is Adele Adler.”
Adele Adler? Now she wasn’t even trying. Everybody knows her as Adele! The whole thing smelled like a lazy catfish operation. But I had time to kill, so why not play along a little longer?
I sent a simple “TTYL” and rolled downstairs for dinner, already planning the next round of this little game.
Under Caffeine
A few days went by, no sign of Betty. Then, on Sunday, while I was halfway through lunch, my WhatsApp alert chimed. Betty.
I let it sit until I finished eating, figuring I’d need a strong coffee for this nonsense. I wheeled over to the coffee vending machine, and there she was—the immovable object. “Sloppy Janet” is a mountain of a woman. The nickname is almost too kind. She’s so large she can’t even stand up from her wheelchair. But size isn’t what bothers me—it’s her total lack of self-awareness. She parks herself at the machine like she’s got all the time in the world, completely oblivious to the line growing behind her.Just like that B52s lyric:
“Hop in my Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale and it’s about to set sail!”
Meanwhile, Betty’s message just sat there on my phone, the digital bait still dangling.
Just another day under-caffeinated. Dammit, Janet!
Leave a Reply