The Unfortunate Camera Phone
Tom sat on the park bench and fiddled with his new cell phone.
He had only bought the phone that day, deciding that it was high time to join the 21st century. But with all the new features, he was still struggling to even figure out how to dial his own home phone number.
'CLICK!' Suddenly the phone made a loud camera shutter sound. Tom jumped, and realized he'd some how activated the inbuilt camera. Looking at the tiny screen he saw the fuzzy rendering of his own kneecap. He then tried to delete it, only to discover, with a heavy sigh of dismay, that he'd actually managed to somehow send the fuzzy photo to his home phone number.
Tom was suddenly brought out of this deep concentration when out of the corner of his eye he noticed an attractive woman in a business suit sit down next to him. He looked up at her, and she looked at him. Suddenly, Tom realized he was staring.
"New phone," he said by way of explanation.
The attractive woman nodded. There was an awkward pause.
"My first one. I'm kinda new to the whole cell phone thing," Tom continued.
The attractive woman began unwrapping her lunch, not looking up.
"I'm Tom," Tom ventured.
"I'm here to eat my lunch," said the woman quickly.
"Right, no right, of course. Lunchtime. Enjoy your.. eating," Tom mumbled burying his gaze into the phone. He went back to jabbing at the phone keypad as he mentally kicked himself. Stupid! he thought. 'Enjoy your eating'? What does that mean? This is why you have so much trouble with women. You make no sense around them. She's clearly too attractive and powerful to be interested in someone who can't even work a cell phone. Now she probably thinks you're a pervert-
'CLICK!' The camera on the phone suddenly activated.
The woman sitting next to him looked up.
"Um, did you just take my photo?" she asked slowly.
"Me? No, nono, I..." Tom looked down at the phone's screen, which indeed now displayed an unflattering photo of the woman sitting next to him with a mouthful of food.
"Oh... no..." he whispered to himself.
"I saw the lens pointing at me. Let me see!" said the woman, grabbing at the phone. Tom made a last ditch attempt to press what he hoped was the delete button before the phone was pulled out of his hand.
The woman looked at the screen.
"It says: transferring image to Home Phone," she said.
"Oh, oh I can explain..."
"I don't think there's any need to explain."
"No, you see, I'm a..."
"... a pervert? Yes, I can tell. A pervert who likes to go to the park and take photo's of strangers!"
"No..!"
"A pervert who no doubt likes to take your photo's home with you and put them on your wall. You probably put them in your bedroom to look at whilst you fall asleep..."
"OH God, nono..."
"... you're probably a pervert who, who has to take stranger's photos because you can't bring yourself to form real relationships... you're probably someone who works 10 hours a day, trying to build a successful career in the as a managing hundreds of people, none of whom would suspect their ball breaking boss of having any kind of passion outside of the office, because God forbid she might be a human being with human desires, who only wants..."
She suddenly stopped talking. Tom looked at her, mouth open, not sure what to say. There was a long moment of silence. A pigeon walked past looking for crumbs.
"Here's your phone," she quietly said, not looking him in the eye as she handed it back to him.
He looked down at it. Stupid thing... he certainly wasn't going to be bring this out to the park again until he knew how to--
'CLICK!'
Tom froze in horror. But then it suddenly occurred to him that this time, the sound of the camera shutter hadn't come from his phone. He looked over to see the woman putting her camera phone back in her pocket before standing up.
"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow?" she said quietly.
The best Tom could do was nod as she walked away.