My cell phone doesn’t work
My cell phone doesn’t work
In the olden days, we had phone books. They came delivered to your driveway, or maybe you could pick them up somewhere. I don’t exactly recall. I remember my mother always having us look for her address book, which contained all the phone numbers and addresses of friends and family. Because, in the olden days, people would send each other cards and call on the phone and whatnot.
I still have one of those filo-fax books that have daily calendars and places to write phone numbers. The company was going out of business and I had to order a whole bunch of calendars, and I always joked with my dad that I only had a few years left to live, because what would I do when I ran out of daily calendars? It’s not so funny anymore, but still.
Anyway, if you are waiting for me to get to the point of this literary tirade, here it is. My phone is broken. My cell phone. My good old-fashioned landline still works like a charm, but that is of little help right now. So what does it mean that my cell phone is broken? Well, I can’t google how to fix it because it doesn’t work. I can’t text my kids to tell them that my phone is broken and I am running late because it doesn’t work. I can’t confirm with the people I have appointments with because it doesn’t work. And I can’t call any of these people on my landline because their phone numbers are in my cell phone and it doesn’t work. I can’t figure out how long it will take to get to the Island of Long to see Son #2 and Dil #2, who are in from Israel for 96 hours because of a family wedding, because my cell phone doesn’t work.
Do you see where I am going with this???
This is the age-old issue of how is technology good for us when we rely on it so much that when something happens, we throw the broken item in question on the floor because we are so frustrated because we have no way of doing anything because we have relied so heavily on said technology!!
And then I think about what will happen if they can’t save everything that is on my broken phone. 17 months’ worth of videos of Strudel. I can’t lose those!! What will I look at when I am on my walks? And pictures that I never developed, because why would I need to print them out when they are on my phone? (Truthfully, I still do not know how to print them out and rely on Son #3 to help me with that stuff.) And then all of the WhatsApp groups and other very vital information that I have saved…. Does any of it really matter? No more Instagram or Facebook — though that might not necessarily be a bad thing…
When I was growing up, we used pay phones when we couldn’t get to a landline, but then we knew all of the important phone numbers by heart. I still remember the phone numbers of elementary school friends — sad, but true. I still remember the credit card number from my dad that would pay for the phone calls made on those pay phones. And as I have written in other columns, I can remember those bits of useless information, but I cannot remember things that happened three hours ago.
And then the question of how do I get my phone fixed. Does this mean six hours at an Apple store? Is it AT&T’s jurisdiction because that is my carrier? Was I not supposed to reveal that information to all of my readers? I have no idea. All I know is that I am feeling very sorry for Husband #1 right about now, because he has to listen to me carrying on about my broken phone. Because it is probably his fault it is broken. I am kidding. This is actually not his fault.
Well, thanks for letting me vent. And if I am supposed to see you this week and you don’t hear back from me, now you know why.
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck is almost positive that her Oreos are going to tell her that this is a sign from above that she shouldn’t have a smart phone in the first place. Which will not be helpful to her at all. But, to make a long story short, Dil #1 saved the day and fixed the phone, and all was right with the world.
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