Tonight something rather odd happened. The camping ground we are at has both space for camper vans like us and motel rooms for people who don’t have a home on wheels.

So tonight when we were watching a series on Netflix, our curtain was open. And a dude comes to our door on the asking if we have Facebook, and if he could borrow a phone to use it. At first, I understood it as that his girlfriend had taken his phone and his car, so he needed to get a hold of her to tell her that the gates to the park closes at 10 PM.

We have a spare (older) phone that currently holds a NZ sim card. Petri decided to trust the dude with this one. The guy was like “I’ll be sitting right there, I’m not running”. Ok, so he was using FB and sitting about 10 meters away. Then he came back, said he waited for the response, said he’d just be in that unit while waiting for the response.

That made me thinking. I’m not sure what data Petri has save and possibly auto saved on his phone, possibly still working credit cards. Petri went proposed that we’d keep the phone and let him know when there was a response. He didn’t agree to this, so we asked the guy to sit just next to our van instead, called it “healthy suspicion” when the guy kept repeating “I’m not gonna run with it”.

We also said that instead of using FB, he could just call the phone and get it over with. But I had heard wrong, apparently it was about some girl he wanted to come over, but he didn’t have her number? So he wrote plenty of people, and called a few as well, but no one seemed to be able to help him. When it hit an hour we said “no dude, enough is enough, we only have so much credit on prepaid card and it’s been an hour, time to give up”. He wasn’t too happy and willing, so I started fearing things would turn bad. But with a few repetitions and power postures from Petri’s side, the guy gave in. After making sure he was logged out from FB.

Such a strange encounter. Even though this seems to have worked out fine this time, things could have turned out a lot worse.

Do you have any strange experiences of strangers wanting to borrow your phone?

Petra