I got a call on the home phone the other day. The Caller ID said “Illegal Scam.”

So, I of course answered it.

Here was Caller ID practically screaming at me, “Don’t take this call! These people want to steal your money, your identity and quite possibly your soul and your Tupperware Velveeta Cheese Keeper, but not necessarily in that order!”

It didn’t matter. I answered. In an unmatched test of willpower, I did resist waiting to get beyond the automated greeting to talk to a representative about lowering my mortgage rate.

I know I should not have picked up. I also know I have no actual need for a home phone.

I can’t help it. The call itself was like an audible wet paint sign. I can’t not touch the wall and see if it’s actually wet. It’s simultaneous curiosity, bull-headedness and misguided double-dog dare wrapped into an action that draws my hand to the wall like ants to cat barf. (I don’t actually know, having never had cats, if ants are drawn to feline vomit. An editor just always used that expression, and I found it both compelling and disgusting. Sort of like a Little Debbie Snack Cake.)

And, when I pull my hand away from the wall without paint on it, it’s like I’ve won a tiny bet. With myself. That I will never pay out on.

There is something about the implied don’t that makes me want to do exactly what the universe, or in the case of the crosswalk, the flashing sign, is telling me. The crosswalk sign doesn’t know whether I can get across four lanes of road in six seconds. But it telling me I can’t ensures that I will risk bodily harm and potentially breaking a heel to try to prove it wrong.

I don’t try and do things to deliberately harm myself. But the very act of telling someone not to do something is what compels him or her to do exactly that.

It’s like when you get a CT scan, and the small sign by the light tells you “don’t look directly into the laser.” I try not to. Then immediately wonder if the smell I think I am smelling is my retinas burning.

I imagine something like this was going through the mind of the guy in Texas, who last week, upon seeing a sign that said “No Swimming…Alligators” declares aloud, “F*** that alligator!” And then proceeds to get eaten by said alligator.

He apparently took off his shirt and took his wallet out of his pants before jumping into the water. No word whether the wallet was alligator. Or if the wall that held the warning sign had wet paint. Or if there is an underwater sign for the alligators that says, “Don’t eat the swimmers.”

Yep, I answered.