Breathe
By Pamela Cerdeira
I forget how long ago it was, I was starting a new project in radio, and I wanted to resume something that was done many years ago: the voicemail. The public would call a fixed number, an answering machine would come in and then they would leave their voice message which could then be listened to on the air. When I was an announcer at Alfa Radio we had one, I remember it because some jokester called to leave the following message: "Pamela, I'm going to touch your cockroach with my tongue: la la la la..la, la la la la la..la..la la la la la la la lala, (because he doesn't have one, because he lacks ....).". Far from the anecdote, replicating the model seemed important to me, but it seemed that the technology was somewhat complicated to replicate, perhaps because it was so old. So I decided to get a cell phone number that I could give on the air. Today it is common, everyone has a public whatsapp number, but not back then. It was an experiment that I felt very confident about because although it seemed that I was giving out in a public way something that was for private use, in reality, it was born with the purpose of being public, which changed the game. I received all kinds of messages, none of them worrying, until an enthusiast decided to send me a picture of his penis... From different angles. That was certainly one of the risks I knew I was taking by giving my number on the air. Without much experience in the subject (of receiving unsolicited penises), I decided to ask on air what I was doing with the subject, there were two options that I left in the hands of my audience: block him or give HIS phone number on air, knowing that what would follow would be, among other things, unsolicited penis pictures among many other insults. The flasher was listening to the show and immediately texted me, "sorry, I didn't think I was going to offend you, I won't do it again." So I didn't block him, I didn't give his phone number on the air (an option that would be off the table today) and I am still incredulous that he didn't think he was going to offend me. Do you really think this is something we are grateful for? It's not like they were saints or blessings.
