Thursday, April 24, 2008

In Which I Am Bested By Technology

I know. It's not that hard to do. My eldest son is reading this right now and he's thinking, "So what else is new?" Thanks, Son.

In short, I have been felled by a cell phone.

The little gem you see here is the phone I use on a regular basis for personal calls. I have another phone that I carry with me for work, but it's one of those ugly utilitarian phones that has Nextel service.

Not that there's anything wrong with Nextel service, but boy howdy, that is one UGLY phone. I don't even think its mother would love it.

So.

My family decided to attend the Saturday evening service we have at our church a couple of weeks ago. Now, the pastor there is a very forgiving type of individual, but one of the things that gripes his craw to no end is when he's speaking and someone's cell phone goes off. There have been several times over the years when this has happened, and he has been known to stop the ol' sermon in its tracks and politely ask the offending party to please silence the phone before he continues.

Sometimes you can almost see the steam exit his ears.

And I'm totally kidding when I say that. Almost.

I mean the man is trying to PROCLAIM THE WORD OF THE LORD here, and some yayhoo is getting a call from Aunt Tillie about what time they're going to be there for dinner. Give the man a break. I'd be a bit teed off as well.

So knowing how The Proclaimer feels about that sort of thing, I decided to put my phone in the silent mode for the duration of the service. Which is what I wish I'd done a few years back.

You see, some good friends of mine were getting married, and they appointed me the "runner" when it came to the wedding day. I had my phone with me (a different one), and wrote down cell numbers for almost everyone in the wedding party so that I could save steps. Since I wasn't carrying a purse that day, just before the wedding march started I set my phone down in the vestibule next to the gift table and sat down next to Hubster.

It was a beautiful wedding, and I cried my way through it. Toward the end, the groom went to the piano and started to sing to his lovely bride. Imagine the romance, and the loving way in which he sang to his soul mate....

Imagine a cell phone ringing at the back of the church in the middle of the song.

Yup, it was mine.

So you can understand why I silenced the little bugger before going to church.

But then I couldn't UN-silence it. The silly thing wouldn't ring. It would just show that I had missed calls. So I went to the settings tab and tried to un-silence it, but there was no tab for LET 'ER RIP, so I was stumped.

It doesn't take much.

Thankfully, the people at the phone help desk are smarter than I am. They figured out I had accidentally forwarded my phone to another number. Their first clue was when they tried to call my number and a man answered.

They're smart like that so I don't have to be. They fixed the problem right away, and now my cell phone can interrupt even the most sacred occasion again.

And that's another reason I'm blessed.

4 comments:

HeyJules said...

I would be so embarassed for you if I hadn't tried to make a call from mine last weekend and couldn't figure out how to send the call.

Yeah, I don't use my phone much...

Anonymous said...

I have such a hard time seeing you becoming confounded by technology... Really, I do. You're one of those technophiles... Right?

<cough>

Susanne said...

Oh yeah, you and me both. I often tell hubby if he goes first I'm going to have a massive electronics sale 'cause I won't know how to work a darn thing in the house!

groovyoldlady said...

I think cell phones are part of a subversive conspiracy instituted by evil personages bent on destroying civility in American life.

To wit, they are evil.