It was a difficult cell phone week around our house, with one of the devices nearly burning the house down and an ongoing struggle to get a new-fangled addition to work properly.
As for the latter, that’s probably mostly operator error, since the operator is me, and next to my late mother, I’m without doubt the least electronically literate person I know.
I broke down and bought one of those Bluetooth ear-piece things that ensure you appear to the world as though you are a certifiable basket case, babbling and laughing to yourself.
But, I need it now that the law has cracked down on cell phone use while driving.
I’m sure that’s a great law, but I admit there have been a few times that I used the phone with my hands while driving since the law has passed.
It’s an age thing, really.
If I think of something that has to be asked or said or done, and I can’t ask, say or do it right then, I had better leave myself some kind of note or it will vanish completely from my consciousness.
So, when one of those thoughts occur to me, it’s either a quick phone call or write myself a note while driving, which, I think, is even more dangerous than the quick phone call.
So, I’ve driven while talking on the cell phone a couple of times, and felt like a felon doing it. In fact, once I saw a cop coming the other way and ditched the phone while he passed. If I’d been stopped, I’m positive my rapid breathing and profuse perspiring would have given me away immediately.
Too much stress.
So, I bought a Bluetooth thingee.
However, the functioning of the thingee is beyond my meager electronics gadget capacity, requiring my son to push all the right buttons to set it up.
But it remains a mystery to me.
There are buttons on it that I’m not sure what they do. They don’t answer the phone, I do know that. Sometimes I go to answer the phone by pushing something in the ear piece, and hang up, instead. Sometimes I go to answer, and turn off the earpiece and the phone, altogether.
If law enforcement doesn’t think it’s more distracting for me to be fiddling around with this piece of Star Trek equipment than to simply answer my cell phone, I’ve got news for them.
Anyway.
Our other situation was even more unnerving and involved my son’s cell phone spontaneously combusting.
Well, not exactly spontaneously, though that’s what we’re telling the cell phone people so we can get the thing replaced.
Actually, the dog ate the phone. Really.
This dog, which came to us as a small lost puppy with floppy ears and paws the size of oven mitts, will eat literally anything. Paper, cat foot, plastic water bottles and, evidently, cell phones.
Did you know that biting into a cell phone battery will cause it to sizzle and spew copious clouds of noxious smoke?
Well, now you do.
Even this dog draws the line at burning debris, so he spit it out, on the hallway carpet, where it burned a hole through to the wood before we found the source of the smoke and put it out.
It wasn’t until later that we figured out what the disfigured, blacked piece of metal was, which was when I was finally was able to put to rest the nagging fear that some strange and hideous destructive force still posed a danger to hearth and home.
Ah, modern technology. What a blessing.
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