I’M NOT SLEEPING WITH YOUR HUSBAND

Last week, around 11 p.m., my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the Atlanta number, but I answered anyway. Raising teenagers does that to you—something in your psyche, or maybe your reptile brain, can always sense an emergency.

It was an emergency, but thankfully, my children weren’t involved. Here’s what happened.

I answered, and a harried woman’s voice on the other end said, “Wendy?”

Not recognizing the caller, I said, “Who’s this?”

“Is Scott with you?”

“Who?”

“You damn well know who. My husband, Scott. I know he’s there with you.”

“Lady, I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

“Bullshit, this is Wendy Davis. I know it. Your birthday popped up on my husband’s calendar.”

“It’s not my birthday, and I don’t know your husband.”

“Listen, bitch. I’ve known about you for a long time. Stay away from Scott, or you will be in deep shit.”

She hung up, but promptly texted some colorful language, advising me to “pass that thing around somewhere else.”

My response was, “I’m truly sorry this is happening to you. Listen, I get why you’re mad. But you have the wrong person—I have no clue who your husband is.”

That was the end of the conversation, but of course, my mind was reeling. I googled the number and found the name of a woman who was indeed married to a man named Scott. This person’s address was about 45 minutes from my house.

And if she had my number, she had my address, just as I had hers—thanks to those wretched people-finder sites that have the potential to endanger someone’s life.

Would she show up? What would I do? The dogs would alert me, that was for sure. But then what? At this particular moment, I wished I’d never read Evidence of Love.

She didn’t respond to my text, and something told me I had gotten through to her. The truth was, I knew where she was coming from and understood her misdirected anger and gumption to do something, anything, about it.

Still, it got me thinking. When random threats arise from someone who completed a simple Google search, we must question what we allow.

The passivity in our online lives translates elsewhere—we allow our phones to record us so we can be served ads, we allow aggregate sites to publish personal identifiable information freely, we allow social media to steal our time and attention, we allow — even encourage — strangers to stalk our social media sites (because we do the same!).

We are so tolerant that we allow a degenerate slob to be at the helm of this country.

I can’t solve this, but I can limit what I contribute. I’ve buttoned down my Meta accounts, logged off, removed the apps. Yes, I’ve done this before, but now I’m not only trying to reclaim something, but also make a nominal difference—a resistance, if you will.

Hell, I may be saving my own life.

As for the scorned woman, God help her and the lady she’s looking for. We’re all victims of what we allow.