Back to basics

So by my estimate, I spent less time in high school than I did shopping for a new cell phone.
And I had that new cell phone for a grand total of two months before I lost it. Good job, Mike.
It started a while back when my wife realized that we had had our cell phones for a couple of years. Apparently, if you keep the same phone for that long, the company will give you a new one, free of charge. There was nothing wrong with my phone, mind you. But they did offer gobs of free ones. And two years in technology terms is like... well, it’s two years. But a lot can happen.
My phone was a basic one. I made calls. I received calls. I felt very high-tech because I had learned to text message, although I am still having a hard time using text message shorthand, as I feel a little dirty typing “U up 4 lnch?” I try to opt for curt instead of improper, and simply go with “Lunch?”
But I decided I would go ahead and get a new phone, because the new ones had all kinds of features. I could e-mail. I could take pictures. I could surf the web. I could make cole slaw. I could levitate. I could paint a house in under four minutes. Oh, the places your cell phone will take you!
My wife and I spent far too much time looking at the different features, researching them on the Internet, asking people about their phones. At one point, someone at work remarked, “Why don’t you just get a phone already?” That is absurd. This is not something you just grab on a whim, such as a car or a house or a kidney. This is a cell phone, for crying out loud! I will be stuck with this thing for TWO years! (Yes, I COULD buy one before then, but why in the world would I do that?)
Eventually, we settled on one kind of phone for both of us. It was a snazzy, sleek little number that roughly 22 billion people on the planet have. And, no, this was not a sweet, romantic matching pair type deal. Rather, it was that both of us independently chose the same phone, and neither of us had plans to back down. A compromise of different colors was reached.
So once the phones arrived, I shelved my old phone and headed into the exciting world of my new phone. There were indeed bells. And whistles. And countless other things that I had no idea what they were for. And I couldn’t figure out how to use any of the features that it did have. I even decided to buy a ring tone — something 11-year-olds do a dozen times a day – and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I went to the store and had them walk me through it. I felt bad for them. It was like they had just thawed me from my glacier and were introducing me to this modern world.
After a while, I just resigned myself to using the basic phone parts, and occasionally fumbling around and trying to take a grainy picture, although more often than not I took a picture of my hand. Also, I somehow turned the ringer off on a regular basis, and I am not sure how I did that, but I think it involved one of the 40 buttons on the side of it.
I will admit there was a certain longing for my old phone. Sure, it was as low-tech as you get with cell phones, but it did everything I needed. I could operate it without looking at where the buttons or keys were. I was in tune with the ring tone. It was synergy.
But I tried to get used to my new phone, thinking eventually it would turn into my new cell companion. But it just wasn’t clicking. It didn’t feel right, like my old one. Then the other day, I was at the grocery store with my daughter. I called home. “How about quesadillas tonight?” I said. “Pardon?” said the woman next to me. “I’m on my phone. I thought that was evident, what with the hand held up to my ear,” I responded.
And that is the last call I made. I got home later that night and could not find my phone, which is odd, because I am rather consistent with placing keys, wallet, etc. in the same place. I checked the three most likely places that any right thinking person would:
1. My car
2. The couch where I woke my son up from a nap by starting a wrestling match
3. A pile of leaves out back (I even used a metal detector for that search)
Despite those routine searches, it never turned up. The next day, I took my old phone out of dry-dock and had them activate it at the store. The moment I used the phone, I felt a comfort that had been missing since I switched over. Simple was back, and simple was good.
I am sure that my new phone will turn up somewhere, either in a leaf pile or a couch cushion or in a pile of onions at the store. And when it does, I will have a big dilemma. Do I turn it back on? Or do I stick with my old phone? And most importantly, do I make the quesadillas?