A Close Call

I almost died yesterday.

It all started with phone call. I was at school in between classes, hanging out with the other teachers and debating the age of consensual sex, when my phone rang. I reached into the pocket of my bata and pulled out my phone.

"NO!" shouted the Chemistry teacher, as he grabbed my phone from me, fumbling with the buttons to turn it off. "Don't answer that! You'll die!"

I stared, nonplussed. "Huh?"

The math teacher jumped in. "Yeah, there's this mystery 4-digit number that has been calling people, and if you answer the phone call, you die. Instantly."

I looked around to see if anyone else found this as ridiculous as I did, but the other teachers were all just nodding their heads in agreement. As far as they were concerned, I'd just had a brush with death.

The whole day, people were talking about this mystery death number. Mothers flipped out when their children touched their phones (and yet had no problem letting their kids play with the empty bleach bottle in my trash...priorities!) The men debated how they could stop this evil from getting to our village. Even my toughest tenth grade boys shied away from their phones. "I'm scared, Teacher, I don't want to die!"

I just watched, and laughed. How silly!

...but I turned off my phone, juuuuust in case.