The I-No-Own-Phone, The Final Part

 

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for Back to the Future

Over the past seven days, I have enjoyed my I-phone.  I was becoming well versed in calling, answering, texting, AND I added maps and weather.  This might be a good thing after all.  Out of my mouth to the techno-gremlins ears.

Yes, my I-phone became an I- no-own-phone.  Well, not exactly a no-phone; more like a no Wi-Fi  phone which, since it was also the hot spot for my I-pad, meant no e-mail and  connection to the lost world of adults.  I headed back to the AT&T store post haste.

Alex met me at the door.  With I-phone in hand, he poked, clicked, tapped, and angled to no avail.

 “You got any Wi-Fi on your phone?” he finally asked the salesperson next to him.

 “No, tower is down.”

 “The tower is down”, he relayed to me as if my hearing was also technically challenged.

“When will it be up?” I asked, as if he knew.

“Maybe Friday.”

I left and headed to McDonald’s for a much needed mocha frappe and Wi-Fi.  I spent Saturday at Whataburger for food and more Wi-Fi.  Sunday I parked next to the library for free Wi-Fi as I assumed the tower was still down since my I-phone wasn’t working.

Monday I was back at the AT&T store and caught Alex just as he was ducking behind the counter. The tower was up, had been for three days.  For the next three hours I stood, drank water, stood, drank water, stood and watched as everybody in the store tapped, clicked, poked, wired-up, switched out I-phones, tried an I-phone4s with no resulting Wi-Fi for me.   Finally Alex announced:

“I don’t know why it won’t work.”

I could have said that the minute I walked in.  The only thing they could do was RE.   RE-fund what I had paid, RE-connect my hot spot, RE-connect that to my I-pad, RE-set my pass word, and show me a selection of phones that would ring, vibrate, send and receive texts.  I chose one just like the one I got for the eleven-year-old.

It seems the 21^st century has ganged up on me.  The brain is willing, but the Techno-gremlins have declared otherwise. 

So here I sit with my lap-top waiting for the dial-up to catch up with my writing.  I will finish this piece for my blog.  Wait and eat lunch.  Google my blog.  Wait and do a load of laundry.  Copy and attach this piece.  Wait and go pick up the kids from school.  Insert this piece in the blog.  Wait. Prepare supper.  Hit send.  

After supper, dishes, homework, baths, I will crank up my hotspot, connect my I-pad, and e-mail friends that I have a new post.  After a full day of dial-up and waiting, I hope Alex’s Grandmother gives him a good talking to.

Over the River and Through the Woods...to Grandma's Condo

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved so Currier and Ives can adopt Aunt Lurlean

If you are of the Boomer generation, pre or slightly post, you probably grew up seeing Currier and Ives Christmas cards displayed around the house or on the tins holding the ten ton fruit cake.  Christmas Eve or Christmas Day found you at Grandma’s with plenty of room to run around with all the cousins. Later you would be seated at the “kids” table for real mashed potatoes, string beans, and ham or chicken and dressing, before diving into the mounds of Christmas presents piled under a real Christmas tree.  At least that is how I remember it, but families have changed since Currier and Ives as my friends and neighbors will tell you.   

  “We had the grandkids for five days.  I’m plumb wore out.”

 “Glad this is over with.”

 “Why would you put people who don’t even speak to each other during the entire year together in the same room on the same day and expect them to be civil to each other? It is just stupid.”

 “I know there were only six of them, but it felt like a whole herd had moved in.”

 “Whee, I’m free!  No more cooking three meals a day for four days for twelve people in a kitchen designed for two!” 

“I hinted to my son-in-laws that the pine needles on my roof needed sweeping off…they agreed.” 

“We managed to get through it.”

 “Over the River and Through the Woods” kept playing in my head against a snowy Currier and Ives backdrop. Time to read between the lines and remind myself they didn’t have an Aunt Lurlean, at least that they would admit to.

 First, if you could get to Grandmother’s house in a horse drawn sleigh over snow without freezing to death, she must not live very far.  No five hour trips in a car.  Unless that sleigh was from “Back to the Future” there were no electronic games or DVD players in that sleigh so rather than bickering or aiming their blaster ray guns at each other, siblings would huddle together for warmth and encourage each other to cross the imaginary DMZ line drawn in the middle of the seat.  The one horsepower sleigh would get good hay mileage, so no thirty minute detour hunting for a gas station so Aunt Lurlean could save 2 cents a gallon on gasoline.  “The horse knows the way…” thus avoiding backseat driving or complaining from Aunt Lurlean that the On Star guy’s accent is not Southern.

The farmhouse is pictured as a two story job with a candle glowing in every window, obviously low maintenance.  Aunt Lurlean would require a generator as backup to avoid stress over possible downed power lines resulting in a semi-microwaved turkey.  The barn offers a place for the children to expend their energy.  Today Grandma may live in a condo and more than likely the pool and game room will be closed for the holidays forcing Aunt Lurlean to invent new games to occupy the children:  Monotonous, Scraping, Family Feuding, Twisted, Name that Dish, Repo Man, Dueling-in-laws, and Angry Bird-Brains.

Currier and Ives would have their family gathered around the Christmas tree and all would be able to trace their family tree with multiple branches down to one root.   Today’s family tree would resemble a stick with so many grafts that no one knows where the original root system began, well except for Aunt Lurlean and she’s keeping those skeletons locked in the closet ... temporarily.

 “Over the river and through the highway to Granny’s condo we go.   Lurlean knows the way to avoid the tolls through the gray and slushy snow, oh.”   Ok, so that’s not the words.  But we didn’t have Currier and Ives Christmases either. The only thing today that resembles a Currier and Ives Christmas is those tins with the fruitcake in them.  I think it is the same fruitcake.