Cell Hell

So a couple of weeks ago I was in the car with my mother-in-law on what eventually turned out to be the trip during which famed Tybee the Frog was purchased. And both of us were trying to reach The Boys (Grandpa, Honey, and the kids) on our cell phones to coordinate ETAs and find out where they were. Power on my phone, as ALWAYS, was down to the last bar. I was telling Grandma how irritating this phone has been for me over the four years that we have had it/them.

Turns out Grandpa and Grandma have replaced their cell phones at least twice during the time that we have had our samecheap bottomoftheline ones that have batteries that don't charge anymore. And we, not they, are the "technogeeks"!

I have actually spent major hours in stores looking for the Perfect Purse that has a nice rigid pocket that will not turn the phone on or try to dial a stored number. The worst thing is that it turns on entirely secretly when I don't know it, so I am constantly recharging it even though I haven't used it AT ALL. Grandma says to me from the passenger seat, looking at her own new phone, "Well, doesn't it have a 'Lock' mechanism? Mine does."

A whuuuttt?

When I get back home I cannot find the [ancient] manual for the phone, although I know we have it because I keep looking things up as I need them. And in case you're wondering, no, I didn't read the whole manual from front to back when we first got the phones because I'm a friggin' technical writer and we WRITE the manuals. We tws don't need to READ NO STINKIN' MANUALS!

In an idle moment, I press the function key and the first thing that shows up is

LOCK

Now, my mother-in-law is the woman who many times, while driving around in her white convertible, states and states away from here, has called our number erroneously, thinking we were my sister-in-law or someone totally else, and then had no clue whatever why WE answered on the other end. "Oh!~ I thought you were fillintheblank! Now how did I do that?" or "I just got a new phone and I'm trying to put in the numbers and it called you without me knowing."

Thus when I confessed to my husband that I had not known about lock for four years, he was quite kind and did not make fun of me. Instead, he looked incredulous for a minute and said, "Are you kidding me? MY MOTHER taught YOU something about a CELL PHONE??? Bwa-a-ha!!!"