My parents’ cell phones
So . . . my father lost his cell phone on February 2. It is amazing that this has never happened before because he is a bit careless and often misplaces things. It’s also amazing that he never misplaced me as a child, but that’s an entirely different story.
My mother typically flips out when he loses things — largely because she’s generally prone to flipping out — but she wasn’t too pissed about the cell phone. They were both using circa 1992 Nokia phones that didn’t even have color screens (so antiquated, in fact, that I can’t even locate a picture online), so they were long overdue for an upgrade.
They visited the Cingular store, where the young phone sales associates are taught to appeal to the gadgety cell phone users. Turns out my dad isn’t quite so gadgety. He became discouraged with all of the extraneous technology on the new phones. Why on earth, he wonders, would he need a camera phone? What is with all of this text messaging? He left empty-handed and quite irritated that he couldn’t find a “plain old phone that makes calls.”
If the man could have found a portable Princess phone with the chunky touch tone buttons, he would have been happier than a pig in shit.
Here’s where I come in . . .
Because my parents are not internet savvy, they rely on me for anything that might be flying around in cyberspace. My mother found out that there were certain phones that were being offered gratis on the Cingular site, and tasked me with finding them.
I overlooked the hot pink Motorola Razr (and thus avoided a beat-down from my father) and chose a nice Nokia flip phone that looked like something that my father could handle from a screen-size-dexterity standpoint.
This could be a very long story, and I’ll shorten it so as not to bore the living shit out of anyone who might be reading this.
When the phones arrived, my mother hinted that I should come over and help set them up. She then changed her mind that evening when I was prepared to head over. And she changed her mind yet again this morning, when she woke my ass up (on a day off, mind you) to set up the phone.
The other part of this story is that good ole Cingular never deactivated my father’s lost phone, which elated the individual who found it.
Upon checking the minute usage online, it appeared that the finder was on a mission to make one call every minute, and according to the call times, he doesn’t sleep very much. The last call was made at around 3:00 am, and would start again at 8:00 am.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the finder was bold enough to answer the phone — even when the call was from a programmed caller — and emphatically insisted that the caller had the wrong number.
So, during the whole activation process, I called my father’s number, and the finder answered the phone. The conversation went like this:
Finder: Hello?
Gina: Hello?
silence
Gina: Who’s this?
Finder: Who’s this?
Gina: Well, I was trying to reach my father, and obviously you’re not him.
Finder: You have the wrong number.
Gina: No I don’t. This number is programmed into my speed dial.
Finder: You have the wrong number.
Gina: No . . . you have my father’s phone.
-click-
A pissed off Gina calls back, determined to fuck with Finder
Finder: Hello???
Gina: Yeah
Finder: You have the wrong number!
Gina: Listen . . . my father’s missing, and you have his phone. WHAT have you done with my father???
Finder: I haven’t done anything with your father!
Gina: Then why the HELL do you have his phone?
Finder: You have the wrong number!
Gina: Yeah, well when we trace his phone with the GPS system, you’ll see exactly WHO has the wrong number.
- click -
For those who are slow on the uptake, my father is not now, and never was missing. But the story doesn’t end there.
When my father finally activated his phone, the Finder was apparently incensed that his free phone had been cut off. He called the number, and when my mother answered, he said that he was looking for his cousin. Knowing my mother, I’m pretty sure she cursed him out. Better him than me.
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