Every Garvey in the Phone Book

I got a random phone call in high school. Michael Bailey, ringing to ask me out.

Somewhere in the conversation, he told me how he'd actually got my number. He'd gone through the phone book and phoned every single Garvey in it, one after another, until he reached my uncle Mike.

"Francine Garvey," my uncle said. "That's my niece."

And that was that. My uncle gave him my number, and Michael used it to call me up and ask me out.

I still think about how much effort sits inside that one sentence. Not a single message to a mutual friend. Not a quick ask around at school. Just a phone book, a whole surname's worth of strangers, and a teenage boy willing to work through every one of them on the off chance he'd land on the right family.

I don't remember much else about Michael Bailey now, if I'm honest. But I remember that. A boy who was prepared to be told wrong number, wrong number, wrong number, as many times as it took, just to get to yes.