There’s a reason she won’t pick up

I’M a speed-dial minimalist. Ideally, I’d scroll down and see only a few vital work contacts along with a relatively small group of close friends.

There’s one serious obstacle to my goal of speed-dial efficiency: the Creep File. A necessary subset of my overall electronic phone book, the Creep File contains the numbers of men I never want to hear from again. If my caller ID flashes Seal Kisser or Deranged Narcissist or any of several other red-flagged entries, I know not to pick up the phone.

These unwanted suitors will remain in my speed dial for at least the next decade or so, long after former colleagues and ex-bosom buddies have fallen to my pruning instincts. True, if a guy hasn’t called in two years, he isn’t likely to call again. But why risk even the remote possibility of an unspeakably awkward encounter when the price of inoculation is only a few bytes of cellphone memory?

Long ago I was naive enough to believe that my speed dial should only contain the phone numbers of people I actually wanted to reach. “I’m never going to call him again,” I remember thinking as I purged my phone of one particularly annoying guy.

Years later I ran into him. On my way home, I reflected on how he hadn’t changed a bit and how nice it was to be alone in the car after all the forced chitchat.

Then my phone rang: an unfamiliar 323 number, followed by an all-too-familiar voice. I hadn’t saved his number, but he had saved mine and was calling to offer up bon mot after tiresome bon mot. What had annoyed me most about him was his compulsive need to opine about everything under the sun, and here I was enduring it again.

After I hung up, it came to me in a flash. I could avoid such unpleasantness for all eternity if I just programmed his number into my phone. The Creep File was born.

A friend of mine had a similar epiphany after deleting an ex-boyfriend she never wanted to speak to again. After he continued pestering her, she realized the only way to avoid him was to put him back in her phone memory.

I have conferred permanent speed-dial status on three others besides the Opiner: the tightwad radiologist who kissed like a seal, the guy from the Bristol Farms parking lot whose pickup line was “Are you Japanese?” and the deranged narcissist who e-mailed me nude photos of himself after I spurned him. (They are entered as Seal Kisser, Are You Japanese and Deranged Narcissist, respectively.)

A Creep File is especially useful for someone like me who’s constitutionally unable to lie and say she has a boyfriend -- or even to pretend she’s out of business cards. When your phone number is disseminated more widely than it should be, you need a strong defense further down the line.

And there’s one thing even the most comprehensive Creep File can’t protect against: the blocked ID call, which I must always answer, even at the oddest hours, because it might be work-related.

I can’t say there are more than a few instances when someone has come back from the past to haunt me. Most guys get the message and move on for good. For all I know, some of my former suitors are happily married, while I, alas, am still a single gal fending off the latest crop of losers.

Yet it could happen. My phone could flash Seal Kisser, a year after his slobbery ministrations sent me running for cover. Deranged Narcissist could decide I’m worth an 11th try, after the previous 10 failed.

Then I will have the satisfaction of knowing that my preparations have paid off. I will press the “decline” button and send him straight to dating purgatory, otherwise known as voicemail.

*

Cindy Chang can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.