It’s too much! Make it stop!
So, I had an iPhone and liked it. It was easy to use and kept me up on what was going on. Then the battery went dead. And because I am cheap, I ordered a battery and tried to replace it myself. Uh-oh, problemo. I tore the phone up trying to put it together, so I needed a replacement. The friendly folks at AT&T waived the time remaining on my contract since we have been with them since 1999, so I got a nice free Samsung Galaxy 4 or some other number between 1 and 10. That’s when the trouble started. I liked being able to keep up, but answering a call required that I (1) swipe the screen and (2) slide a circle on the screen over. That was hard to do with one hand after I had gotten the phone out of my pocket. I missed a number of calls and then had to go through more contortions to get the voice mail, if I could figure out I had voice mail.
After a couple of months of this frustration, I decided I needed a nice dumb flip phone to solve my telephonic problems, so I called the nice people at AT&T and said I wanted to downgrade my phone. The nice lady on the line said I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade yet. Apparently they don’t get too many requests to downgrade, so I repeated my request. She allowed as how I could get a “Go Phone,” which is a phone without a contract, so I did. I also could send in my smart phone from the infernal regions and get money for it, which more than paid for the Go Phone. I was money ahead!
The Go Phone arrived and “all” I had to do was put the SIM chip (phone identity thingie) from my old phone into the new phone. Unfortunately, the SIM chip was smaller than the allotted slot in the new phone, so I hied myself over to the internet and found instructions on how to make a small SIM chip holder out of an old credit card. Through skill, patience, perseverance and using a new X-acto blade, I made said SIM chip holder. I put it in the new phone and it worked! And all my contacts (200 of ’em) were there! Couldn’t figure out how to move my calendar over to the new phone but I had kept a paper backup (always keep a backup, boys and girls!) and went back to using that. I sent the old phone off to AT&T where it was changed into a nice credit on a little card. How precious! How spendable!
So, I’m not up with it as I used to be, but I can answer calls by flipping open my phone. And after all, I’m still listening to CD’s. Rock on, boomers! Sometimes (not always) the old ways are the best ways!
Biscuit City 