familiar to me and I know what a Tweet is, I think. One facet of the
age that has escaped me however, at least until today, is the
ubiquitous cell phone. "Not something I need, " I declared loudly
whenever I saw someone with their arm crooked to their ear or the
tiny implement attached to their head. Visions of myself wandering a
store talking to the air like a vagrant on Broadway conversing with
mental aliens... scary!
I was still thinking of the days of living in a town where every
corner had a pay phone (remember those?) and I had good knees that
could handle a walk along well lit nighttime streets to make a call.
But now we live 13 miles from the nearest small town and even in the
daytime it can be lonely driving to a meeting or to a friend's house.
At night is it pitch black. My knees are older and crankier so
abandoning the car to walk to a phone is damned near impossible.
After some thought and consultation my husband and I decided to
succumb buy a pay-as-you-go cell phone. Seemed simple enough. Carry
the phone when we travel and only pay for the calls we make. Oh, the
naiveté.
We made our purchase, and opened the package. A chainsaw might have
been useful for this purpose as the phone was encapsulated in one of
those hard plastic child/adult/tank & bazooka-proof packages. Since
I'm most likely to carry the phone with me I confidently began
reading the accompanying literature. A short time later I realized my
college degree in English was not sufficient to pick and choose among
cell phone plans. It might be easier in Spanish since the English
language booklet that exploded from the package with all the assorted
paraphernalia was much thicker than the Spanish version - but I don't
read Spanish. I began to whimper. Calling minutes? Air time? Roaming?
Three months or one year? 60, 120, 400, 800 minutes? Double this?
Added to that? As I began to lose consciousness my blessed husband
leapt to the rescue.
I've resigned from decision making, happy to leave it all up to him.
Sometime this evening he'll activate the phone and do choosing.
"After all," he says, "can it be any harder than choosing a Medicare
Health Plan?" Oh dear god!
5 comments:
"I am not a Luddite."
The committee understands that, Ms Matawheeze, but if you are a loyal citizen of this country, we're sure you will be glad to provide us with a list of your associates who are Luddites, and that you will explain your involvement with them and with the various Luddite front organizations of which you have been a member.
You still got it!
Mr. Brush,
I claim my rights as a citizen and refuse to answer your questions. You may refer further inquiries to my attorney. I insist that I use technology often and admire it as any good citizen would. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any Luddite organization.
That would be Bushy, ma'am, Mr. Bushy Brush, but because cruel little children with uninspiring names like Bill and Jim teased me about my adorable name when I was small, I changed it to Snow. Snowbrush, all one word. I have thought about changing it legally as well, but if I just call myself by a one word name, I would anticipate electronic forms insisting that I have at least two names. I, frankly, don't know how Sting and Liberace manage.
I blush to refer to anyone as gentlemanly as you by the epithet "Bushy". You could always resort to being Snowbrush Snowbrush. But then someone would call you Snowbrush squared and it would be downhill from there.
Post a Comment