My phone. Sigh. I acquired a phone two years ago because my son, Bruce Wayne, won it in a silent auction but couldn't really afford the cost of the monthly upgrade it would require and gave it to me instead. I used it for a while and just mastered the operating system (we'll just say it wasn't one of the more successful phone manufacturers we're dealing with here too) when my darling nephew (and he really is darling) dropped a can of spray oil from about two feet height onto the touch screen and shattered it. I took it back and they offered to sell me for a very low fee a replacement phone of a more mainstream brand but I stubbornly refused feeling exhausted at the prospect of learning yet another operating system. And now I have had this phone for quite a while, replaced the battery, and have been unable to be satisfied by so many of the features of this phone . . .
I'll not bore you with too many details, but if you're time is so darned precious you probably wouldn't be reading my blog anyhow so here we go: 1) several of the letters on the keyboard hit once will produce multiple copies of the letter needed--e and k most notably; 2) several other letters and the shift key and the alt key often have to be hit multiple times in order to work at all--c is the one that annoys me most as it is usually the first letter in the word and by the time I notice that it's not there, I'm three words down the line having never mastered the ability to watch keyboard and the screen at the same time on my phone. On a computer I touch type, but one cannot touch type on a keyboard the size of a large postage stamp. So I struggle between the pull of "typing" as fast as I can go, eyes glued to the keyboard, and watching the screen for errors that the keyboard is creating by its uneven response to my touch. Grrrrrr. 3) Lately, sometimes, but not all the time, and never when the phone guy is in the room, my phone has developed this new and charming habit of going dark on the screen when the screen is slid back to reveal the keyboard. In other words, I can't use the keyboard. So there are a lot of things I can't do.
The good news, and I hesitate to characterize it that way because if it truly were good news, it would be that the phone company would out of some deep-seated guilt, gift me a much better phone from a much better manufacturer. We all know that won't happen.
But I digress.
The good news is that the phone works perfectly fine so long as it's plugged in. It texts, it calls, it goes on the web, it looks up stuff and slides back and I can use the keyboard (such as it is) to my heart's content.
A thought came to me today as I was contemplating this new phone "feature." I have a phone. It works. I take a charger with me wherever I go. I plug it in, it works. I unplug it and it works. I slide the screen back, it dies. I plug it in, it comes back to life. Everywhere I go I find a place to plug it in or risk its death. I thought maybe this marks a minor return to a previous inconvenience of an old household phone that had a wire and had to be plugged in. But then I realized that those old phones were actually wireless . . . the docking station had to plug in but the phone was "portable" as we would call it. My phone, au contraire, is not portable at all. It is not wireless, at least not literally, although the wireless signal still works. But the phone itself only works when attached to a wire. It has to be plugged in.
I have traveled back in time to remember my childhood days when a phone was a thing you had in two or three rooms in your house at most--kitchen, living room, and parental bedroom. And you had to stay near it to talk on it. It was a simpler life. No voice mail, no answering machine, just calling and either you got them or you didn't or their line was busy so you might try again soon.
I want you to know this is not making me feel the least bit nostalgic. It's not like Hostess Ding Dongs. I'm just crabby.
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