Thursday 14 June 2012

The Little "Ding"

My daughter Lindsay has been bitching and begging for a new phone for months now, vacillating between an I-Phone and a Blackberry, because her current phone (which I hasten to add she was thrilled to get three years ago), just didn't cut it anymore.  As far as I was concerned it worked just fine - after all Rob and I had the same phones, which was probably part of the problem -  and I couldn't understand what all the griping was about. I did my usual speech "When I was your age ... blah blah blah" and the updated version "I didn't get my first cell phone until I was in my 40's ... yadda yadda yadda" but to no avail.  On the night of her sleep-over this weekend, her phone mysteriously stopped working, the screen went black and nothing I tried - and believe me I tried everything - could get it to work. I scrutinized her friends suspiciously, wondering which one of these doe-eyed little innocents had shown her how to sabotage her phone. I finally had to cave and seeing as she had her own money to pay for it, agreed to take her in to the Bell store the next day.

Meanwhile, the next morning while it was still quiet, I started researching the rate plans and I talked to a lovely gentleman at Bell. I know many people consider "Bell" a four letter word in their vocabulary, which of course technically it is, but to be truthful I have always found them to be extremely helpful and I would never, ever switch to that other company whose name begins with "R". Anyway, I digress, I have to get back to the delightful man at Bell. In order to access my account he had to ask a couple of security questions, and we were several minutes into the conversation when he stopped me, "I just have to just check this" he said. "My records show that your year of birth is 1963, is that correct ?" I replied in the affirmative, to which he said "But you sound so young!"  That right there people, is a good enough reason to ensure I remain a loyal Bell customer for life. 

I repeated this conversation to each of the girls as they trouped in for breakfast. I was giddy with delight, until Rob had had enough and pointed out, "What he meant was - You sound so young, for someone who is so f***ing old".  If any of my readers know the number of a good divorce lawyer, I am currently shopping around.

So back to the phone, Lindsay finally settled on a Blackberry and of course  it hasn't left her hand. She came down stairs last night - nearly an hour after she had supposedly gone to bed - panic stricken and almost in tears because her screen was locked. "I'm going to call Tess & Tori, they'll tell me what to do" she said, her voice breaking. "No you won't. It's almost 11:00 PM. You can't call people at this time of night" I exclaimed. "Of course I can " She retorted, "They'd want to know".  Well let me tell you, if one of my friends called me at that ungodly hour to tell me their new phone was on the fritz, I'd be striking them off my Christmas card list pretty damn quick. Fortunately the issue was averted, because I just took out the battery and all was right with the world.

Meanwhile today, she is obviously enjoying her new phone because I received text, after text after text. I was almost ready to turn off my phone because I was getting sick of hearing the little ding of the incoming text alert  every two minutes. My answers were getting shorter and shorter (and don't suggest why didn't I just stop replying - because I tried that, and she reverted to text to land-line instead) until I was down to a terse "Yes" or "No" . Finally I get a message "Am I desturbing you ?"  Oh, no of course not. I am just sitting here with baited breath waiting for your incoherent, misspelled, rambling missives. Especially seeing she was supposed to be in class. Perhaps if she spent more time listening, and less time texting in English, she may actually learn how to spell "disturb'. I'm just saying !




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