Some People Should Not Own a Cell Phone!

I don’t know how many times I have endured my husband’s endless ridicule over the amount of time I spend with my cell phone. He’ll say I spend forever on the phone, but he won’t admit that 90% of the phone calls I receive come from him. Instead of using the Google button on his own phone, he will call me to look up the number to O’reilly.

Considering that he’s a car guy, and he fixes cars every day, you would think he would save such a number, but no, he has called me for it so many times that it is forever burned into my memory. In fact, its 446-3425, just in case you were wondering. He will call me because he’s lost his keys, lost his tools, forgot to call someone else, or because his phone is going dead. That one is my favorite. I get 5 or 6 calls a day because  his battery is quickly draining and he wants to know why cell phones don’t hold a charge like they used to.

I’ll tell you why they don’t hold a charge, and it’s not because the batteries are crappy. In fact, batteries have come a long way. You might be thinking it has to do with the amount of power running all those apps and the internet typically drains, but I’m gonna suggest that UNLIMITED PLANS are to blame. There was a time when I had to check our minutes daily, tell him when he was getting close to an overage, point out how many texts he was sending and that the dimes were adding up quickly. There was a time when he had to regulate his usage. Then Sprint rolled out an unlimited plan like none other, and from there on, his battery has never been the same!

I must admit, I’m glad we have personal cell phones, and that he can quickly call me without a three ring circus. I can remember back when we were first married. Cell phones were still big bulky monstrosities few could afford. I couldn’t be gone 10 minutes without him trying to track me down. Once I was in HEB and the overhead speaker said “Tiffany if you’re in the store you have a call at the courtesy booth.” I made a b-line to the customer service desk, thinking maybe he needed to catch me before I left to store to grab something, or maybe there was an emergency. I wasted no time picking up the phone and when I did he said “hey, what are you doing?”

At least cell phones have saved me the embarrassment of having my named called out over the loud speaker! Of course Heaven forbid I ever fail to answer that cell phone!  There have been times when I had mine charging in another room and he couldn’t reach me, and he’ll call his poor mother to track me down! It’s pretty much the most hilarious thing you can imagine, a nearly 40 year old man who gets in a panic when his wife doesn’t answer the phone!

I may not always answer it, but I always know where it is. Ok, confession: I keep my phone in my bra. If that grosses you out, don’t ask to borrow my cell. For some reason I can’t hear it in my pocket, and I lose it in my purse, but it’s always safe and sound and rarely nabbed by strangers when kept safely under my shirt! I know, you’re seeing me in a whole new light… sorry ’bout that!

I keep the same phone forever and ever. In fact, the one I have now has been so well used that the keys have been rubbed down to almost nothing. You can’t even see the letters on it anymore. But my hubby, well that’s a story all it’s own.  I think the amount of dust in a body shop may be partially to blame for the fact that all his phones wear out pretty quickly. He never keeps one a year, forever complaining that he can’t hear anymore. He was aching for a smart phone so he could scroll through pictures quickly, so I thought I’d use MY upgrade and surprise him with an HTC!

Wasn’t that sweet of me? Only he couldn’t figure it out, so he ended up trading with Blondie, and she got the amazing new phone instead. He used another phone for a few months and then he wanted to take another stab at the smart phone. He confessed that he just gave it to Blondie because she was begging and he wanted to be the “YES DAD” he always is! So, I ordered him a Motorola.

We get the new phone in, and within days he’s complaining that it’s freezing up and it won’t load his emails. So I spent a couple of  hours on the  phone with Sprint tech support. Once I finally convinced this guy that yes, indeed I am capable of typing a password correctly, he finally conceded that there was a problem with the phone.

Now if you were thinking the humor has run out of this story, this is where it gets good. The new phone came in, but I didn’t have time that day to switch it over. So it was sitting on the dresser in the box. The next day we headed to the lake. We got on the boat, and I asked my hubby where to safely store my phone. He showed me a compartment, I put mine in there and guess what happened hours later as we loaded the boat onto the trailer?

You guessed it, he pulled a sopping wet phone out of his pocket! No biggie, it was already broken, I already had the new one at home- so we got home and I made the switch. But he decided to try the rice in a bag trick just to see if he could rescue the other phone. Don’t ask me why the next day, he and my son were messing around with both phones and spilled Dr. Pepper in the brand new one! Fried phone #2!

So I ordered an HTC from Ebay. It came in and the internal speaker wasn’t working. I sent it back. The new one hadn’t arrived when we left on vacation. So we get half way through our vacation when my hubby’s cousin called to let us know that a girl was answering my hubby’s number.
WAIT! WHAT?? He must have dialed wrong, right?? So I dial my hubby’s number, and sure enough, some 12 year old in Kansas got this phone off of EBAY… apparently they fixed the speaker but didn’t reset the device. Good thing her mother got on the phone with me, all I could think was “great, I’m probably gonna get a $300 bill for music downloads” because that HAS happened to us before! So it took hours on the phone with Sprint to release that device. Apparently it was quite tricky since the new phone wasn’t sitting in my hands. I can’t even begin to explain what all we had to do with that to make things right, but long story short, we got home from vacation and there is was! Brand new, 4G, HTC EVO Smart phone.

My son says “you should give that to me and make Dad take mine since he always breaks his phone.”

“I won’t break this one.” Daddy said.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS!!

We have been home a WHOPPING WEEK, and what do you think happened?????

After nearly an hour of searching our house, making me call his phone over and over, searching our room, searching our yard, checking with Papa next door to see if a practical joke was in the works, calling the gas station to see if it was left behind, and offering every kid in the house $5 if they managed to find it, I finally suggested to my husband that he may have set his phone on top of his truck before he drove away this morning. Guess what he said?

“I think I”d know if I put my phone on top of my truck! Why would I do that? I didn’t do that, it’s in this house.”

So, as calmly as I could, I said “well, then, go ahead an go do what you needed to do and I will look for it as I clean house today. Surely I will find it. No big deal… Don’t let it stress you out.”  I smiled, I remained calm, I was pretty proud of myself!

And he left.

A few minutes later I could hear the rumble of Old Whitey in the driveway. As he came into the house, he had that deer in the head lights look.

“I found it”…………………. “Where?”…………………..”On the highway……”

This time, he’s on his own…..

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