My Phone

I’m thinking about having my cell phone stolen. I’ll just go out one day to a cafe with it and “accidently” leave it on a table while I go to the ladies’ room or for a leisurely stroll through the shops and by the time I come back for it the hateful little slab will be someone else’s problem.

I wasn’t always this way. I loved the phone I used to have. It was one of the simplest models available at the time and let me tell you, me and that phone understood each other perfectly. It lived to serve, at least most of the time. There was one regrettable period in which it spontaneously called people with the redial button when I went to the toilet. I suppose it must have panicked, finding the front jeans pocket in which I always carried it suddenly squashing down around it with devastating force. Whatever may have been the motive, I cannot pretend to have enjoyed hearing a small voice saying, “Hello? Hello?” when I was sitting on the toilet and having to decide, after a confused moment, whether to extract the phone from my pocket and try to explain to the other party what had occurred or to play dead and not make a sound. Remaining perfectly silent, of course, isn’t always possible in such circumstances. Luckily redial usually meant it was a friend on the other end and I would be able to laugh the whole thing off with them. There was one toilet call to my father-in-law, however, and for that I elected to play dead. Foolish of course, since the man worries incessantly about family members coming to harm, so for him to get an unexpected call from me and then hear nothing but silence (I most sincerely, ardently hope) on the other end simply prompted him to ring back immediately and ask in an agitated voice what was going on and was everyone was alright?

Excepting the redial fiasco my phone was an exemplary communication device. Sadly, with the passing of the years it grew fuzzy beneath the screen and chipped around its edges. Finally the battery began to fall out at unexpected moments and I decided to buy a new phone. Why I didn’t get another model like it is a question for which I have no satisfactory answer. I just thought I’d get a really good phone and that it would last me for ages. I went for another Nokia, my faith in them unshakable (I thought) but instead of browsing their lower-end phones went straight to their top model and that was the fatal mistake.

I like appliances and electronics that are simple. The simpler the better. I once sent M all over town to try and find me a microwave that had only a dial in the way of controls. Believe me, if I could find a cell phone with a dial I would buy it. I couldn’t even answer my new high-tech phone at first. That should have been a sign to return it immediately to the store and get a simpler model, wouldn’t you think? Actually I still can’t answer it with any degree of promptitude. The phone directs me to slide my thumb over an animated arrow in the direction indicated when I have an incoming call, and I do as it says, but it doesn’t work. I slide and slide and nothing happens and the person eventually hangs up. If it’s M he gets quite testy and right away rings the landline. “Why don’t you have your phone on you?” he asks. “What’s the point of having a cell phone if you don’t use it?”

It has occurred to me that the phone is trying to sabotage my marriage. But it’s not just the incoming call answer mechanism that frustrates me. It’s a hundred other things. I can’t complain anymore about it to M – I don’t want to make him cry in front of the kids. He’s offered to try to sell it for me but when I asked him what he thought we could get for it and his answer was about one third of what I paid for it I crossed my arms and said, “I will learn to love it.”

To be fair, I am prepared to believe it is a great phone in the right person’s hands. And by ‘right person’ I mean someone who doesn’t carry an electromagnetic cloud around them at all times that scrambles every computing device in a three meter radius. I just have to be in the same room as a computer for it to crash and the hapless owner to shake his head and say, “Gee, it’s never done that before.” If the army knew my worth, boy, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog, that's for sure.

Anyhow, the way I see it I’m stuck with this phone until it a) dies, b) gets lost, or c) gets stolen. It looks the picture of health so I’m not going to pin my hopes on a natural death. If I lose it I look bad and M might start reminiscing about some of my losing streaks like the ‘02/’03 season when I left five different wallets at various stores and public places all over Calgary. If the phone gets stolen, however, we all win. People will feel bad for me and M will make sure I am never again in possession of the kind of phone that anyone wants to pinch. If and when the day comes that I find myself rid of it I’m going to go down to the mobile phone shop, slap my wallet on the counter, and say, “Bring me your cheapest phone, my good man. Spare no effort in scouring the shop and back room for the model that does nothing, nothing whatsoever but dial a number. And whatever you come across, ask yourself this: could a monkey call his mother from this phone? If the answer is no, keep looking.”