Song of the Phone Continued

Ok—so I bought an apartment faster than I bought the phone. That is, if I did buy the phone, since there was some discussion of whether I should rent the phone, and then return it after whatever time it was, but the problem was that the phone had to be returned in pristine condition. So I think I bought the phone, which is now telling me that I missed a call from Beatriz, which is not true. I was busy trying to figure out how to answer the call, and getting contradicting information from the young, all of whom had been sending text messages from the womb.

“Swipe the screen,” said one.

“Press the phone icon,” said another.

I was off in the poetry shop beseeching help from Elizabeth, who has small hands and also fingernails. What did I have? A fork, with which I was trying to pry the cover of the charger jack.

“You are now going to have to open this for the rest of your life,” I told her, since the likelihood that my hands will get smaller is equal to the likelihood that the cover will get bigger.

“No problem,” said Elizabeth, who pointed out that I really should do something about the date, since the phone thinks it’s 3:15 AM on Wednesday, December 3, when in fact it’s 2:15 PM on Tuesday, December 2.

“It’s probably 3:15 AM on Wednesday in Korea,” I told her, since the phone that I ended up with is a Samsung, “and it’s always useful to know the time in Korea.”

Elizabeth agreed, in the mild way that people agree with people-who-probably-aren’t-dangerous-but-still-you-never-know…

So why did I end up with a Samsung Galaxy instead of the iPhone that I thought I was going to get?

I have no idea.

Let’s be clear—my job yesterday in Radio Shack was to nod my head and agree, since Hector, the nerd / employee, was entirely in control of the process. So we looked at the dinky little phones that were available for an upgrade, and Hector then steered me to the larger phones. Right—so that seemed like what I should do, and somehow the Galaxy was suggested and then assented to. So what about Internet?

I had decided—I didn’t want Internet, but Hector? Well, he was having none of that, since it was crazy to him to buy a Galaxy S5 and not have Internet. So guess who now has Internet?

Somewhere in the process, I became utterly obsessed with the question: would I have to transfer all my numbers manually, or could Hector transfer the numbers from my old phone to the new?

Hector just sighed….

“I’m gonna come back with a million questions,” I told Hector, and that’s true, since if you go to the Galaxy 5s website? Here’s what you see! 

      

 

That, of course, leaves me with YouTube, but you know what? I just can’t—not today, since I am sitting behind two tables of probable Koreans, all of whom are busy chatting with their girlfriends via Skype while texting their mother back in Seoul. They have, in fact, been here for a couple of hours, and the number of words exchanged between them? I have more fingers on my hand.

Oh, and when they do interact? It’s exclusively to show their friends something appearing on their screen.

Oh, and guess what? I tried to establish an email account, only to get the notification from Gmail that “someone recently used your password to try to sign in to your Google account.” So now I have to figure out—was that someone me? And should I reset my email?

“You’re going to have to be careful now,” said Lady, “since nobody wanted your old phone, except maybe for historical purposes. But now, people could steal your new phone….”

Why do I hope they will?