The Despicable, Dastardly, Yet Desirable and Coveted Cell Phone

I am highly skilled at computer software and training staff members in Word, Excel, and just about any software that comes along. I do it well. I do it fast. I am excellent at it!

But, give me a cell phone, and I'm all thumbs. If I had to text an SOS I would be SOL, TU, and FUBAR. Don't ask.

I bought a cell phone for my Significant Other (S.O.) so he could call me when he is so engrossed in his job (restoring engines) and is in a dark place far, far away from a phone, to tell me he is going to be late(er) for dinner.

After two years of this, I finally got my own cell phone. For, you know, emergencies. But first, I needed to spend an hour with a magnifying glass to read the little manual with the teeny tiny print to see how to customize my phone. It was days before I learned how to leave an intro message that simply said, "hi, this is Jeanie. I am away from my phone right now…." No, wait, how can you be "away" from your cell phone when you have it duct taped to your right hand? "Hi, this is Jeanie. I can't come to the phone right now…." Same quandary. "Hi, . . . . I can't talk right now because I am already talking to someone else."

Finally settled for "sorry I missed your call, please leave a message."

That took about two weeks to figure that out. Then there was choosing the ringtone. I could choose New Age tinny sounds, rippling tinny music sounds, annoying indescribable tinny sounds. Or I could go online right from my phone and find sounds from movies, sounds from famous people, sounds from cartoons, sounds from Disney. . . and I immediately thought of "It's a Small World" and shuddered. Can you imagine? Just thinking of that song will cause an endless loop running inside my head for 48 hours. What would happen if it was my ringtone? I'd probably lose my mind by the end of the week. So I settled for the T-Mobile theme music.

I snapped a picture (with my cell phone after I figured out which button was the camera) of my cat and miraculously made it my "wallpaper." These things I can do blindfolded on my computer. It takes a little extra bit of time to figure this out on my cell phone.

All this is to say that it probably took me a year to figure out how to put names in my phone book, how to save my pictures, how to download sounds (at $1.99 each). And then my cell phone was pick-pocketed right out of my purse while I was at a little neighborhood store. In two minutes, my 14-month investment of brain cells trying to puzzle out the different functions of my cell phone was gone.

So now I have a new cell phone and I am having to start all over. It's not the same. My cat has since died and I no longer have his picture. My sons' numbers were in my lost cell phone and I didn't have their numbers anywhere else because they were, well, IN MY CELL PHONE. They change numbers so often that I have given up memorizing their numbers. I can't keep up. So, finally one son called and I immediately saved his phone number into my cell phone and managed to spell his name correctly – something I was never able to fix in the old cell phone. Andy was forever AmdY (I don't know how I did it).

I think my only solution is to take my new phone and go to a middle school and just hand it to the first 12-year old I see and have them set it up for me.

I also got a Blue Tooth to use while I'm driving so I won't be breaking Washington laws of not using your cell phone while you are driving (which is not being followed by the way). Only – I have this little tiny booklet with teeny tiny print. . . – So, how long will THAT take me to figure out????

I can always put the Blue Tooth on my ear (if I can figure that out), and jabber at all the idiot drivers, cursing their mothers, and look like I'm talking "hands free" on my cell phone.

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