So Mil, do you have any advice for us, now, with your experiences with cell phones? Um, yes.************************************************
ALSO, KEEP IT OUT OF THE KOHLER!
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When I retired from my second career (insurance), I sat there one morning, cleaning out my desk and musing about the probably thousands of calls I had had over the years---calls at the office, calls at home, calls at six a.m., calls at midnight. Believe me, I was up to here (chin) with those calls!
Wishing I would never ever hear another phone ring or listen to an answering machine again, I sat there with my can of Diet Pepsi I was drinking and I rubbed it, saying---"O Genie, if you are in this can, please...my wish is: "no more phone calls!,"
I should have saved that can, because there was a good genie living in it---a productive genie! Since that day, I just don't get phone calls, (if you don't count all the surveys, free cruises, credit card solicitations, and all that stuff.)
Wonderful! Bliss! No more midnight calls anymore saying---"If my teen-age son borrows a Hummer to take his date home from a party, and he is a little tipsy, is he covered on my insurance?" You know the type calls.
It amazes me---anytime I go to the grocery store, bread store, Walgreens, or whenever, there are people standing around on the front sidewalk, talking on cell phones. Waiting for seats in a restaurant, people are talking on cell phones. I marvel at this! What is so important and urgent to discuss that they couldn't have covered it at home---in private? For example---look at me---my business was all caught up! Why talk out there on the sidewalk?
We did get a couple of those rudimentary cell phones in the late nineties; this was to help the wife in an emergency, if she had car trouble, etc. You see, we were once (in 1996) on the way to a party in the Sandias. It was HOT---mid-July and our car quit out east about 8 miles; it was the timing chain! The cars were zooming by at 70 mph, each one spreading a giant wave of hot air and fumes all over us. A friendly, helpful, guy with one of those old "lunchbox" (big black portable) phones stopped and helped us call a wrecker. We finally got back to town, but missed the party.
Out first set of phones were just phones, no cameras or any of that. They were only about twenty-five dollars a month. The only exciting thing to tell about them is that mine fell into a Kohler. Alas, it was not waterproof. On replacing it, for a fee, the girl laughed and said that it happened all the time.
We updated our cell phones later on for better acoustics. We got cameras, which I was not too keen on, having used a Koni-Omega 2 1/4 by 2 3/4 for several hundred photo jobs. A camera in a phone was beyond me!
My phone paid off once big time! I knew of a client who was an older lady, and she fell in her garden once and lay there several hours before someone came along and helped her up. Likewise, a man I knew lay on his cold driveway one winter and nearly froze while waiting for help to get up. So, I hate to admit it, but one day I bent over to turn on the yard faucet, which was at ground level, and got off balance and my knee buckled and I fell. No serious injuries but scratches from a pyracantha bush which damaged me and ruined my shirt.
There I was. I couldn't get up. The wife was at work. I had my cell phone in my shirt pocket and luckily, my neighbor who is a plumber, and a former Marine, had his pickup parked 20 feet away in his driveway, and there was his phone number on the door! I called him and he came over and helped me get to my feet.
Sometimes, when you need a cell phone, you REALLY NEED ONE!
Now we Americans have moved into the era of Blackberries and Apples, among a bunch of others! It seems that now everybody's got a fancy phone! When our kids come to see us with their kids, the "awfulest" amount of texting, tweeting, twittering, peeping, and beeping is going on. We are constantly checking the ovens, smoke alarm, and timers!
The wife has been wanting one of these new phones; I was not as interested as she. After all, with all our electronic gear that we have now, the house probably glows in the dark already! But we bit the bullet, got Apple iphones, (fours), and we are up and running. (I think!) I, myself, the most unlettered electronic gadget person there is, have already sent out five "peeps," all by myself. How about that? Yes, it is a heady feeling!
Be careful with this expensive phone. You know "Smucker's Law of Marmalade." "One drop of orange marmalade can somehow make everything within a square yard sticky." It's true, my friends. While writing today, and eating a PNB marmalade biscuit, I got my new Apple iphone lying innocently nearby---sticky.
1. Be careful to not carelessly run up your "peeping" bill.
2. Try to keep the orange marmalade off your Apple, and
3. Keep your phone out of the Kohler!
Well, reckon that’s about it for now. Think I might just listen to some Christmas carols which my wife put on my new Apple 4. Yes! You can do that. Or…you know…I believe I’ll run down to Walgreen’s and walk around in front on the sidewalk, with my new iphone, nodding at all the other talkers, calling my home phone or something…faking it somehow….and trying…to look important!
*********30********
BY MIL
12/12/12
Sent from my Pad
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