When I reached back into my past to text a girl out of the blue, I had little idea of the scathingly hilarious reply that would return: custom-made memes and a burn to level the most inflated ego.
Last summer, I was invited to attend a crawfish boil at Strawberry Reservoir by my friend M from Tacky Galoshes.
While I was there, I met a cute girl who I’ll simply refer to as K.
“Hey,” I asked, “Could you take a picture and send it to me?”
“Sure,” she replied, and sent me the following picture.
Later that evening…
K: Hey, I hope you got the pictures. It was nice to meet you!
I am pretty sure I never responded to that text, or saved her number, for nine months later I received a series of text messages from her trying to figure out who I was. The crawfish boil long forgotten, neither of us had any idea how we’d ever met.
K:I was going through my contacts and this number is in it with the name “Neil. Is this Neil? If so, who are you? Haha sorry I’m not sure I know you at all.
N: Yes, this Neil. .I don’t know how I know you, either, and I don’t have your number saved. Some ways we might know each other, though… well, I like hiking a lot, and I love foraging for berries in the wilderness and stuff (thinking she might have read this blog or something)…
K: Huh. I don’t know where I got to know you to have your number. If I got it from lame-o things like Tinder I would have saved it as “Neil Tinder.” Not that I’m judging if I did because I was on it too. Oh the tales I have from that! I got rid of that a while ago so I’m a bit perplexed. My name is K and I’m a member of the fitness cult known as Crossfit. Hiking is amazingly fun but I don’t recall running into any Neil and swapping numbers on a trail full of berries.
I’ve lost most of the text messages I sent around here, because I have an old phone. Needless to say, we concluded we didn’t know each other, just had each other’s numbers somehow. I said something like this:
N: Well, we really don’t know each other, but perhaps we can get to know each other more.
K:Of course we can meet each other more.
I probably texted her once after that, and promptly forgot about the whole thing.
MONTHS PASS.
Cleaning out the text messages from my decrepit phone’s inbox, I discover the crawfish picture and make the connection. I text K.
N: Neil here. Remember how we couldn’t figure out how we had ever met? We met at a crawfish boil at Strawberry Reservoir a year ago.
K: Ah yes!..that’s where the mysterious Neil came from. Haha 🙂
N: I found a picture you’d sent of me, not sure why I didn’t connect it sooner.
We texted back and forth a little, and I left her last text unfinished.
The next morning, she had sent me a message.
K: If you’re easily offended, I apologize in advance for what’s about to happen. You only met me that one time so you might not understand my jokester nature. Nevertheless, I can’t resist a goldmine when it’s put so nicely in my lap for me.
I could not help but be reminded of a scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where the giant spider Aragog informs Harry and Ron they will not be allowed to leave the Forbidden Forest where they are visiting him.
“Go? I think not. My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat, when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Good-bye, friend of Hagrid.”
Feeling trapped—but curious, I opened the messages. This is what she sent me:
Of course, my phone could only open a few of these because it is old. I asked her to email them to me, and she assented. When she did so, she sent a couple more:
Well played, K. Well played. Yours was a burn forged in the fires of Mount Doom.
I, uh… I still haven’t replied.
Did you enjoy this post? If so, you’ll probably enjoy Weaseling to Succeed, in which I send Pokemon Dark Knight Rises fanfiction I wrote to a library to avoid paying a measly fee.
If you don’t get all the berry references, check out Urban Forager, a series in which I attempt to live on my college campus for a week subsisting solely off whatever plants I can find.
Follow me on Facebook, if you like. Or high-five a lizard. Both are worthwhile causes.
When some friends in my apartment complex discovered two pots immovably stuck together, I ventured the only logical explanation: Soviet KGB agents and a malevolent power more oppressive than the stench of your 
