Phone Calls and Bryce

I'm a chronically chatty person by nature. I'm the person who spent more than seven hours on the phone talking to my family on Mother's Day while I was on my mission (count 'em: seven. We get two phone calls a year as missionaries: Mother's Day and Christmas. I made them count. Plus I had two families to talk to.) In high school, I was often found chatting away on the phone with my friends for hours on end. (Almost always girls--I didn't talk to guys that much on the phone. Go figure.) Anyway, this is just to say that I'm comfortable on the phone.



Usually.



If I don't know the person I'm calling, or if I'm at all nervous about potential rejection, I am deathly afraid of telephones. In high school, this led to some long drawn out sessions while I tried to gather the courage to call someone up to ask her on a date. I remember writing down different scenarios, making notes about what I could say, just in case something went wrong. Yeah. I was that kind of guy.



I no longer make notes, but I still am terrified of phone rejection. What's up with that? How can I go from being this phone-confident person to being this guy who can barely bring himself to hit the numbers? I try to avoid calling customer service reps unless I'm really angry--that's the only way to really combat the nerves that I've found, but it's not like I can get angry any time I need to call someone. Maybe I'm the Incredible Hulk of the phone world . . .



I assume I'm not alone in this regard. Anyone else have any phone horror stories they'd like to share?