Wednesday, April 21, 2021

 April 21, 2021


My husband got his first cell phone, which is his current cell phone, in 2014. He was still a member in good standing of the work-a-day world, and what prompted his finally giving in to our pleas to get a phone? There was an accident on the Burlington Skyway Bridge, which delayed our daughter’s getting to his workplace to pick him up on time. She had gone out to Burlington for a reason that none of us recall at this point and was on the bridge when a dump truck’s box began to rise as he was going about 25 MPH, and there was a bridge strut in the way.

David ended up calling me from a landline at the quarry where he worked (which he could call out on, but which I could not call in on), wondering where the heck she was. Of course, I, having a cell phone, knew, because she had texted me about the problem. By the time he called me, I was able to tell him she was getting off the bridge soon and would be there…before too much longer.

The very next weekend, he had a cell phone.

Being hard of hearing, he doesn’t make or receive too many actual telephone calls on his device. However, he has learned to text and using his fingers in this way is his favorite method of contact. In these retirement years, when I am in my office working (or pretending to) and he is in his office doing the same, texting has become one of our major forms of communication. We’re in separate rooms, not that far apart, but he often has his headphones on, so yeah, texting is crucial if we wish to have any interaction between us at all in the morning.

Until this past Monday, that is. Our cell phone network suffered an outage that was Canada wide, intermittent, and lasted most of the day. Now, I don’t really think that the reason for what happened next is that outage. I think it was purely coincidental. In fact, I didn’t know about the outage until I sent him a text and the message came back that there had been a “message send” failure.

Then his cell phone battery died, and we charged it up. And a couple of hours later, after not being used because there was still no network available, it died again. Aside from not holding its charge, the phone is in a perpetual “searching for signal” mode. In other words, it’s pooched.

So, a new adventure is in the offing for my husband, and to a lesser extent for me as well. Within the next few days, when she has time, my daughter is going to go online and get each of us new cellphones. Now my phone, it still works, and I haven’t had it seven years. However, it will not sync with Apple anymore, and sometimes has challenges with updates. You see, the model I have is the next model to the one David has. It didn’t cost anything when I got it a few years ago, and that was why I got it. It is definitely obsolete.

David would get upset when I would ask him, as I was driving, to answer a text message on my phone for me; he would grouse that he didn’t know how because it wasn’t like his cell phone. Sadly, whatever new one our daughter chooses for him, for us, is not going to be like his, either. But I know her. The model she owns is a fairly new one, so that will likely be the model that we get.

And that proves that while she is like her daddy in many ways, she is also like me. She is going to take the path of least resistance, knowing that we’ll both likely need not just instruction from her at the beginning, but ongoing “rescue” as well.

That, my friends, is a fine example of anal thinking. Pardon me while I wipe a tear. I’m just so proud!

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 


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