24. A man tried to catfish me
It wasn’t a phone call, but a string of texts I received.
I moved out of my folks house in WA down to TX when I was 19 for a career I was extremely fortunate to land in at my age. After living there for maybe 4 months, I get a message from a number out of Ohio saying ‘hey, how are you?’ blah blah blah. I didn’t know anyone from Ohio. Never met anyone from Ohio. I reply back with a who is this, how do I know you, all of that. This person tells me we met locally at a Mexican restaurant and exchanged numbers. I don’t remember doing any of that shit. I ask for a name and a picture, as I’m better with faces than names initially. The picture this person sends is of a gorgeous girl, like model type. Definitely did not meet her ever before in my life.
As the day progresses, ‘she’ tells me she’s moving to my area, but is still in Ohio. She also knows a few things about me, like the general area I live in, the color of my eyes, what kind of car I drove, but nothing too important or specific that I would ever share with anyone outside of pleasantries. I’m still weirded out over the fact that I have NO CLUE who I’m talking with. She asks me to tell her about myself, but I’m highly untrusting of this. I dismiss her and leave it at that for the night.
The next morning, she asks me if I can pick her up from a restaurant in a town about 60 miles away. Now I’m becoming even more suspicious. I ask the name, she tells me. I ask if I look it up, will I find it? She says I would, and to come pick her up as soon as possible. Something amiss. I can’t find the restaurant, the name doesn’t even exist in Google. I tell her I’m not coming to pick her up. She replies with ‘fuck you’s and ‘you’re obviously gay’ and ‘stop acting like a bitch’. I just ignore it from there.
Later on in the day, I show all of this to a friend of mine. He responds with ‘Dude, this a guy. Women don’t act like this. This a dude doing this. I don’t know what he wants from you, but this sounds dangerous to me’. The town ‘she’ wanted me to go drive to is a small border town known for alien and drug smuggling, along with a cartel/gang presence.
I have no idea how this person ever got my number, knew my name, knew some minor personal details about me, or what they wanted from me, but it was the single-most creepy thing to ever happen to me over the phone.
