I was (accidentally, I presume) texted by a stranger this weekend. Because I'm terrified of everything, I hid in the bathtub until the stranger stopped trying to talk to me. It probably would have been funnier for me to interact with said stranger and see where things went, but I'm not here to be funny, I'm here to be me, and me is 90% useless. So instead, I took the much more passive route of just letting the wrong number talk themselves out. Which they did! Hooray for passivity!
Still, how about those seven texts, huh? I feel like there's a lot going on there, so let's break it all down.
Line 1: IT'S STAR
I assume this is their name. They are announcing their identity - an identity I am not familiar with. Thus the ignoring.
Line 2: TOOK AWAY THE OTHER PHONE
The plot thickens. Suddenly things are making a little more sense. The other phone was taken away. This is a different phone. I'm not supposed to recognize this number. Star now has a very valid reason for texting me from an unknown number - the other phone is gone.
But what happened to the other phone? Who has the authority required to simply take away Star's phone? And why? What were the reasons? What was Star doing that warranted such an action? And if Star did something that prompted an authority figure to "take away" the first phone, WHERE DID THE SECOND ONE COME FROM? What was the point of taking away the first phone if Star was just gonna grab another phone anyway?
Already Star has established herself as a resourceful thief who remains one step ahead of her gullible overseers. This is basically Hogan's Heroes in wayward text form.
Line 3: WYD DID U HANG UP
YOU KNOW WHY, STAR.
But seriously, Star's 13, right? She's young enough that someone can just roll through and take her phone, but old enough to say, "Fuck that. World's practically MADE OF PHONES" and just grab someone else's. You know what I mean? Young enough for consequences, old enough to not particularly care about or respect those consequences.
Plus, she (Star's a girl, right? We live in complex times, for sure, and I don't want to dump an unsolicited gender on someone just because they had the misfortune to type in my phone number by mistake) got hung up on. DRAMA. And knowing Star like I do, it was probably self-inflicted drama. Girl needs to watch her tone.
Line 4: BRUH
I think "bruh" is "bro" for people who are so aggressively lazy they actually add letters onto shortened words in order to convey how few shits they give.
I'm not your bruh, Star. YOU KNOW WHY.
Line 5: REAL TALK
I think "real talk" is generally supposed to signal an onslaught of undiluted realness. Usually though, it just ends up being the same BS people would normally say, only sassed up about 20 degrees.
Here I believe Star's "real talk" is that she wants me to text her back and explain why I hung up on her (hanged up on her? Let's pretend it's not my job to know which one is correct), but THAT'S NOT REAL TALK, STAR. That's a continuation of our previous non-real talk. I'M ALREADY BEING AS REAL AS I'M COMFORTABLE BEING.
Line 6: PICK UP YOUR DAVID
My immediate assumption was that "David" was some sort of slang for phone. I'm 33. I still don't know what Ariana Grande is and Google is right there. It makes perfect sense that 13 year-olds would have their own coded language that I can't access because I'm too friggin' old and I still say "rad" unironically.
So I went to Urban Dictionary, because when I was still on the outer rim on knowing things that's where new slang terms went to live and be partially understood by lame people. But this is essentially all Urban Dictionary has to say about "David":
Except about 1,000 definitions just like that, and most of them centering on the mind-bending package size of the world's Davids.
So "David" here may be an errant autocorrect. Or, I'm increasingly considering, David might be an actual human child who's been sitting out in front of Star's house since Saturday, waiting for someone to come and pick him up.
I hope Star gave him a juice box or something, at least...
Who am I kidding? Star didn't give him shit.
Line 7: IF MY CUZIN SAID SHE GOTTA GO SHE GOTTA GO
And we end things in the most cryptic and potentially ominous way possible.
One possible interpretation - Star's cousin and whoever Star thinks she's talking to have some sort of a relationship. Star's trying to play peacekeeper here. "If she said she needed to leave, then that's all it meant. Don't get worked up over nothing."
Another, more likely interpretation - SOMEONE'S GONNA DIE.
Maybe I'm not giving Star all the credit she deserves, but generally the only times I hear the phrase "______'s gotta go" it's in a mob movie and someone's about to get whacked. I don't know Star's cuzin personally, but based on what I know about Star, I think it's safe to assume she comes from a family of career criminals.
I'm glad I didn't respond now. I'm pretty sure I was about to be roped into a hit job and, quite frankly, I don't think I'm emotionally equipped to pull off contract killings for total strangers yet. Not even for Star.
Seriously though, I hope David's not dead.
