Remember when you were little and you lived in Hamilton, Texas and could dial five numbers and get ahold of your grandparents? I do. You probably don't, though. Let me take you through it:
Hamilton's only prefix is 386 so all you had to dial is 6-blah blah blah blah. Isn't that insane to think about now? Not 254-386-1234, just plain old 6-1234. (Like Peter on Family Guy, "Seven? No, this is Four. You're looking for seven." Maura knows...)
I picked up my sister's iphone the other day and couldn't even dial a number out. It took me two solid minutes first of all to make the screen light up, another minute and a half trying to find a number at all.
"I JUST WANT TO CALL OUR MOTHER! HOW DO I CALL OUR MOTHER!? NO, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE WORD OF THE DAY!"
And no one can have a good bar argument anymore without someone whipping out their iphone and completely ruining it. If this were 1994, you could argue with your friends for hours over who won the World Series in 1990, if Victor from Days of Our Lives really is Jennifer Aniston's dad, and whether or not Pocahontas and John Smith ever hooked up. I can't even begin to start a good bar fight without someone dispelling it with their phone. Disappointing, to say the least. And since everyone has their phone stuck to their heads or fingers, what is there to do at the bar? I stare at my bartender and ask her uncomfortable questions while everyone else entertains themselves on YouTube. If I can't start a good fight with these schmos, maybe I can pick on someone equally as unprepared as me.
"Um, hey, Beebe? Didn't you say the other day that cats have a secret claw in their shoulder?"
It's not necessarily that I'm dumb to technology or anything, I would just rather keep things simple. Which is why I have always relied on an old crappy phone to get me through the in's and out's and who, what, why, etc. I had the most sensational, sorry piece of shit phone. We went through a lot, me and Red. She had been dropped in a man's nasty toilet, cleaned, revived, thrown up against walls, put back together I don't know how many times, and still did exactly what she was supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less.
Then one stupid day... she disappeared into THIN AIR. I was leaving my bar around midnight to head to my regular watering hole for a beer and night cap, but when I got there, phone wasn't with me! I assumed I had left her at my bar, but she was nowhere to be found. It had been flooding pretty severely so the only thing I can gather is that Shoal Creek took her away. I am still mourning the loss. And some hobo is living large with Old Red.
The next day, I went to AT&T to see if they could send out a search and rescue team and see if they couldn't retrieve her. They asked me to please leave the store. But a nice new salesman, Christian, gave pity on me and my attachment to the old phone and led me through the grueling process of acquiring a new phone. We talked for, what I can only guess five hours, (didn't have my phone on me so I had NO idea what time it was...) and finally came to terms with a touch screen, black, boring, not a piece of shit, phone. Really, it's whatever. As long as it dials numbers and stuff.
So it's a been a few weeks; me and boring phone are getting along pretty swimmingly, I guess. She has this nice little ding she does when someone texts me, and while the touch screen thing threw me for a bit, I'm growing used to it.
Boring Phone and I have moved to a whole new level: just now she *ding*ed so sweetly at me and I reached to retrieve her from my night stand, failed, and plopped her in a tall glass of water (which was ultimately set there for my nightly coughing attack, but proved less than useful on so many levels). So, now phone sits by the bed in a plate of rice, soaking up any tiny bits of moisture left, and tomorrow, we'll do a thorough blow-drying. I have faith that she'll pull through. And if she doesn't, I'm going back to Shoal Creek for my red phone.
Keep up the ridiculous bar arguments, people. Leave your phones dark and in your pocket.
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