Cell Phone Blues Part 2

In a blog last week, I complained about the never-ending cycle of new cell phones that allegedly don’t cost me anything.
My other complaint about getting a new phone every 12 months is that as soon as I get used to a phone it is replaced by one that is supposedly better. My wife and sons would get a new phone every six months if they could so they are always happy with a new phone. Once again, I feel left out.

Am I the only one that has this problem?
If not, how do others deal with it?
Is it true, as my family tells me, I have to get a new phone when the service contract is due for renewal?

Peace Frog

My neighbor’s 9-year-old granddaughter runs into my yard and proudly displays the melted chocolate on her fingers.
“Look, we have chocolate,” she tells me.
“No kidding,” I respond, warning her that she had better not get chocolate on her good clothes. Her 7-year-old sister is right behind. She also shows me the chocolate on her hands.
“Are the boys home?,” the older one asks.
When they were younger, I would take the two girls on a tour of my house, spending the most time in Michael and Danny’s rooms.
“Look they didn’t make their beds today,” I’d tell the two tiny girls as they looked in awe at all the trophies, medals, baseballs, posters, instruments and other stuff in the bedrooms.
Since then “Are the boys home?” is really code for “Can we go inside and look at all their new stuff?”
I explain that Danny is at a baseball game and that Michael had four wisdom teeth pulled less than 24 hours before and is trying to rest.
Ending my sentence, I notice the black “peace sign” earrings dangling from the 9-year-old’s ears.
“I like your earrings,” I tell her.
She twirls them proudly and tilts her head to one side the way girls sometimes do when they receive a compli-ment on what they are wearing. We did not have a discussion about the evolution of the peace sign over the past 50 years. When her grandmother overheard me complimenting the earrings, she remarked that she didn’t even realize the strangely-shaped earrings were a symbol for peace.

The day before, a peace sign T-shirt on a boy who couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 caught my attention. Just before the girls with the chocolate on their hands had come over to see me, another neighborhood girl was playing tennis in the street wearing a tie-dye T-shirt.
Children wearing symbols of the 60s and having no idea what they are is nothing new. For some reason, the earrings, the T-shirt and the tie-dye made me feel a little nostalgic. Born in 1963, I was not a member of the 60s generation. As someone who came of age in the late 70s and early 80s, I did admire a lot of 60s music, fashion and philosophy.

“Alexis had the cutest peace sign earrings on,” I tell my wife later.
“All the girls wear them,” she explains.
Danny, 15, is curious about why we find a child wearing peace sign earrings so interesting. Everyone wears stuff with the peace sign.
I explain that when I was a child the peace sign was not a child’s toy. Wearing a peace sign was too radical for a young child. It symbolized all kinds of things to the silent majority, including possible “anti-American” leanings.
“Isn’t it silly that people could get others so angry by wearing a symbol for peace?” I ask my wife and son.
Mary agrees.
Danny doesn't respond.

Let me know what you think.

(Bonus points if you recognize the title of this blog and its connection to this area. It doesn't count if you have to use Google.)

Is there a free lunch?

Standing at Doolittle Park watching my younger son Danny play baseball, my blood pressure rises slightly when older son Michael turns and asks his mother if she can bring him to the cell phone store. The spike is short as my wife tells him she doesn’t have time.

My problem with the downtown AT&T store is not the employees. They are nice and helpful. My problem is it always costs money, despite what Mary and my sons tell me.
“The phone was free because we got the upgrade,” is a typical response to my question about how much the new phones cost.
I took one economics course in college. In the first class, the professor went to the board and wrote: “There is no free lunch.”
“If you remember nothing else from this class, remember this,” he urged.

Driving home from work about three or four hours after the baseball game, I decide to call home and tell them I’m stopping at the library. Danny answers. No one else his home, he says.
“They are still at the phone store.”
About 10 minutes later, I’m driving by the AT&T store and see Michael sitting in a chair and Mary talking to an employee. It must just be a problem with Michael’s phone, I think. No worries.
I dial my cell phone and instead of getting my wife, I get a recording that tells me to call the service department for more information. I am trying not to panic, but recall that this is the message you get when they are switching over your phone and plan.
The library takes my mind off potential phone problems. Arriving home, I find Mary in the kitchen taking something out of a small box on the counter.
“There is some kind of problem with our phone...”
She cuts me off.
“Here is your new phone,” she tells me, smiling. “It didn’t cost you anything.
“I’m going to get a $50 rebate,” she adds.

To be continued.

Sorry, Wrong Number

“Is this the priest?,” a woman who has just called my cell phone asks.
I explained that I was not a priest and that she had the wrong number. She was very apologetic. I told her it has happened before and not to worry.
“Have a nice night,” I said, haning up.
Over the past two or three years, about a dozen people have called my cell phone looking for “Father.” After the first few times, I guessed that some priest and I have a very similar cell phone number.
The strange thing is that I used to also get calls on my home phone from people looking for a priest with a very similar last name. At least at first I thought it was “people.” After a while, I suspected it was the same older woman who was calling. Over the years, she sounded more confused.
Just before it stopped, we actually started having conversations that went something like this:
“Hello,” I would answer.
“Father (similar to my last name)?” she would ask.
“No this isn’t the Father. You have the wrong number ma’am,” I’d reply.
“Are you sure Father isn’t there?”
“No priest lives here ma’am. Our last names just sound alike.”
A couple of other times she called asking for her brother. Again, I’d tell her she had the wrong number. Sometimes she would engage me in a short conversation about her brother or some other family member she was looking for.
By this time I’d figured out that she was older and starting to get confused and since I’m a lot younger and sometimes get confused, I couldn’t be angry.

I didn’t think much about all this until a few weeks back. Sitting at work, my cell phone rang. Noticing it was an unfamiliar number, I was prepared to take another call for the second priest whose name I don’t know.
“Hello,” I said.
“Why did you just call my cell phone?,” a woman asks in an angry, accusatory tone.
“Who is this,” I asked.
“Never minds. Who are you and why did you call my phone?,” she replied.
Fortunately, my father taught me it is cowardly to get loud on the phone with someone you don’t know. I calmly explained that I didn’t call her number and wasn’t even on my phone at the time she said she received the call.
“I know you called my number,” she insisted. “Where did you get it from?”
When she threatened to get the police involved, I ended the conversation as politely as I could.
After hanging up, I checked my outgoing call history and did not see her number.

Let me know what you think.