Smart phone, dumb owner



The thing about these smart phones is that they are, well, smarter than I am. Anytime that I need to do something with mine- download a song, get a newer version of the software, etc- my wife has to do it for me. I’m just too dumb, period.

And getting my wife to do things like that for me isn’t always easy, because she is a busy woman. She works a full time job, takes three kids to baseball and softball practice just about every day, helps with homework, cooks, cleans, and all of that.

Oh I help her with taking the kids to practice and stuff whenever I can, but mostly she just tells me to stay out of the way. She doesn’t even let me anywhere near the kids’ homework.

So anyway, my phone was giving me a little bit of trouble last week. The music player part wasn’t working, and that was driving me crazy. I depend on that thing a pretty good bit when I’m working, because it somehow helps keep me focused on what I’m doing. Without it I start daydreaming, or thinking too much, or something.

I finally got my wife to take a few minutes out of her busy schedule to help me out with the phone. I had already called the phone place, and they told me to plug it up to my computer and sync it with something, or download something, or something. I don’t know.

Well when she finally got to messing with the phone, it was about 11 p.m. Now, let me say something about my wife here. She might do a lot of things and stay pretty busy during the day, but once the sun goes down she’s done. I don’t believe she’s seen the clock turn midnight since we were dating.

So I knew I was taking a chance on her doing anything to my phone that late at night, but I was in a Catch-22. If I let her mess with it, I was risking the life of my phone. But if I pointed out to her that she doesn’t do well that late at night, I was risking my own life. And, she would never help me with my phone again. And, my music player still wouldn’t work. So I bit my tongue and let her work.

Sure enough, a few minutes later she came and told me that not only did the music player work, but she had also lost all of my applications and my contacts.

“Let me get this straight,” I told her. “You are saying that a few minutes ago I had a whole bunch of phone numbers in my phone, and now I have zero. Is that about right?”

“Yes, I’m sorry” she said- while she yawned. “I’ll mess with it again when I can. If nothing else, you can copy them from my phone.”

The problem with that logic (I thought to myself but didn’t have the guts to tell her) is that I couldn’t care less if I lost Aunt Whatever or Cousin What’s His Name’s number. She has probably 50 family and friends on her phone. I’ve got like three family members and friends, total. I can fit their numbers on the palm of my hand if I have to. What I have in my phone- or, what I had in there before Sleeping Beauty got hold of it, was about 200 contacts.

Real people’s numbers. People that I need to talk to about work, or sports, or something important. Not what kind of casserole we are bringing to a dadgum birthday party. So no, sweetie, I don’t think I can copy the numbers from your phone.

Like I said, though, I didn’t really tell her that. My phone can’t wash my clothes or cook me dinner.

The next day I took my phone to the phone store and got a new one. I explained to the guy what happened, what my wife did, and so on. He wrote down what all I should do and sure enough, when I got home I plugged in my phone and got all my contacts back.

Even Aunt Whatever and Cousin What’s His Name.





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