One of my friends who was a huge scanner fan (did you know they had their own magazine?) worked in a boring mundane part of his family's business. Most of his day was spent waiting around for two or three loads of paperwork to come in to be filed. It was a make-work type of job to keep him employed and out of trouble. What he did most of his day was listen to the scanner. Mostly police and fire calls but he did modify the scanner to pick up cell calls. Most were short but there was a two hour long call that the radio tuned to one day I was visiting. Given the price of cell calls in the mid 90s, especially during daytime, this was highly unusual.

The call was a professor at the local state university talking to a woman whose identity I was not able to determine. Almost the entire conversation was about how much he hated Palestinians. That they were subhuman and should be wiped out. I grew up in the South and had heard hateful things before but this was the first time I heard someone advocate for genocide so openly. That conversation has stuck with me ever since, making me wonder what's going on in people's minds that they keep hidden from the public.

At one point in the conversation the woman asked if he was on a cell phone and if anyone could overhear them. Despite there being no way of them knowing we were listening, it still caused my hair to stand on end. He said it was unlikely. The quality of the signal didn't waver during the call and was strong the entire time was he probably was stationary nearby. So very odd that he didn't call using a landline given the cost of such a cell call.