Can you hear me now?

I had to replace my old cell phone, which I really didn't want to do...... it was one of those old flip-phones, that made calls and received calls--- no fancy stuff. However.... after a lot of dropped calls and mysterious shut-downs, and my cousins in NY telling me they could barely hear me, and even friends in Clear Lake who thought I was whispering on the phone.... it was just time to bite the ATandT bullet and replace that phone.

We may not have the greatest restaurants in this little town, but we do have an ATandT store, and that's where I went.  At first glance, I thought I had walked into a high school auditorium..... the sales clerks all looked so young.  Do they all head to the ATandT store after graduation?  And each of them had an iPad-thing hanging around their neck.  As they talk to you, they're typing your information into that iPad and wonder of wonders, your telephone history is all over their little screen.

"Wow.... your phone is from 2008..... and it's still working?"  (As if the year 2008 is part of the stone-age?  And does this child in front of me even know what the stone-age means?)   He asked me what type of phone I was looking for, and before I got a word out, he was listing all the models and apps and options.  I was getting dizzy, and we'd barely begun.

I explained that I wanted a phone.... a simple phone that would let me make calls and receive calls........... and I would like to not lose all the numbers that are currently in my phone that he was holding and I was starting to question my decision to let go of that old flip-top antique.

"Let me show you what's available now................"   And off we went, me putting on my glasses and the kid holding onto the iPad around his neck--- he had given me back my old cell phone and was impressed that I had taken such good care of it for 'all these years.'  (Let's see..... maybe in the year 2008, he was only 12 years old.)

There was an entire wall of phones in front of me..... fancy-dancy little things that needed to be touched with the tip of my finger in order to come to life ("No, no, not your fingernail, your finger-tip!")  He demonstrated the picture-taking resolution, the hundreds of apps, the memory, the games, the GPS, the data, eMail capabilities, alarm clocks, calendars, pill-taking reminders........ (What?!)  I just want a phone............ a blessed phone that will let me make calls and receive calls. (Besides that, I don't take any pills, so I don't need a reminder for that, and how old did this little kid think I was anyway?!)

We walked away from the big wall of the latest-and-the-greatest... and the kid took me to a far corner of the store.... two little flip-phones were on display. (Finally, something I can understand.)  Two different models of flip-phones, similar to the old phone that I was still reluctant to part with.  I asked the kid which of those two models would be closer in design and function to the one I bought in 2008.  "That one..... you can probably figure it out without even reading the manual, which is as thick as a textbook." (My cell phone from 2008 has a manual about as thick as a restaurant menu.)

Fine.  I told him I'd like that phone.... and I could see the disappointment in his face.  Before he went into the back of the store to get the flip-top, I made him promise me that he could transfer all of my numbers from the old phone to the new phone. "Not a problem."  Fine.

The kid transferred all of my numbers to the new phone.... "Wow! You have 120 numbers in here."  I told him I have lots of friends and a big family.  (Then I thought he was being a smart-aleck because these days, kids who are on Facebook have 4359 friends, having signed up their first 120 friends in the thirty seconds after registering on that site.)

I left there very happy with my new phone..... the happiness lasted about 37 hours...... and then I was back in the phone store because I had inadvertently deleted one of the necessary categories in the "shortcuts" app.  "How did you do that?" the kid wanted to know.  I told him that I was just so used to my old phone that I just pressed the buttons on the new phone the way I used to press them on the old phone.

However..... the kid was impressed with the fact that I was able to change the ring-tone on the new phone.  I left the store with a 'traditional ringer' sound on the new cell phone.  When I got home, I looked at the other options and figured out how to make the phone play classical music when a call is coming in.  I really wanted to ask the kid how I would go about getting a Barry Manilow song playing when I receive a call, but then I thought better of that request. I'm sure that young man has no idea who Barry is. 

All joking aside... the 'kid' in the ATandT store was very nice, very helpful, efficient and courteous, and very very patient with me. I had told him to explain the 'apps' to me as if he were talking to a ten-yr-old. (Not realizing that a ten-yr-old could probably teach me how to use the darn phone.)  The young man suggested that I use this phone for 14 days, and if I wasn't happy with it, or if I wanted to 'upgrade to a more sophisticated model,' he would be glad to do that for me.   I don't need a sophisticated phone..... I just need a simple flip-top that will let me make calls and receive calls............ not give me driving directions from the Hill Country to Alaska, not give me a morning wake-up call, and not give me a pill-reminder for pills that I don't take.  I would, however, have liked it if AT&T would have put just one Manilow song on their ring-tone option list for this flip-top.