Embarrassing! Phone Ringing In Class at 4:10 Means His Ringer Was On For Two Hours And No One Texted Him

The final few minutes of Math 38’s 2a period, a class that uses the 2a period, were unexpectedly blighted by the ringing of a phone at 4:09pm. Information quickly narrowed the suspects to Percy McMahon ’27, sitting on the second row from the front, to the left of the professor. “I thought I told you guys to silence your phones!” said Professor Ian Kim, while McMahon frantically scrambled to decline the call. 

The class ended without further incident, but everyone knew the truth: Percy McMahon had left his phone unsilenced for the entire two hours of the 2a, and no one had texted, messaged, or called him until the very end. 

“It was a pathetic sight, or I guess sound,” said Sophie Hasson ’26. “I mean, if I just left my phone on vibrate for Kim’s class, it would be thumping like we were underneath a heavy metal concert. If it was totally unsilenced, you wouldn’t be able to hear the lecture. It would be like an avant garde composition for triangle and theremin, all beeps and dings.” 

“Two hours!” marvelled Jorge Khoury ’27. “A whole two hours, and he didn’t get a single message. I think he must be the loneliest, most antisocial, most developmentally stunted guy on campus. Does he even have any friends?” 

Experts confirmed that the phone call likely signalled a miserably solitary lifestyle for McMahon. “I’ve written for years on the so-called ‘loneliness problem’ among young Americans,” said sociology professor Carmella Stanley, “but I’ve never seen such an awful case. It’s almost unimaginable- two hours of his life and not a single person in the entire world felt there was any point to reaching out to him.” 

Hasson was bewildered by other notifications McMahon failed to receive. “No GroupMe dings, no Snapchat rings, not even any news notifications. Come on! FreeFood@Now was blowing up the whole class, but he must not be in it. Does he live under a rock?” 

Khoury explained that he tried to justify McMahon. “First I thought, hey, maybe he turned off silent mode during the break halfway through class. Then it’d only be an hour of being a worthless loser, which is half as bad. But I remembered we didn’t take a break that day. Then I thought, maybe his phone was silenced, but an emergency contact came through. But I had seen who was calling him. It was a ‘possible scam’ caller.”  

Still, both Khoury and Hasson agreed that McMahon’s lack of notifications was not the worst factor in his abject and myopic existence. 

“At least he has a phone. I would have to kill him if was one of those ‘phone free’ guys,” said Hasson. 

—JR ’25