I am too Old for my Phone

Sometime while Anderson Cooper and Cathy Griffin were ringing in the new year my Blackberry Storm decided to die. I believe this was because earlier in the evening I did that thing which I know not to do; allow Facebook to perform an update on my device. If Congress was of any value to the country at all they would ban all computer and cell phone updates within twelve miles of the nation's borders.

I naively assumed that a simple rebooting and recharging of my phone would set things aright but despite numerous trips to my truck in the middle of the night to check on the progress of the recharging (I had left my regular charger at home before I went to Larry's for the new year) my phone remained dead.

All of this means I am the new owner of a device known as a Droid. I realize of course that this means at the young age of 56 I have lived too long on this earth. Jesus take me now. I have outlived my usefulness on the planet.

Back when I bought my Blackberry I suspected that I was trekking beyond  my technological abilities. Within half an hour of owning it I returned it to the Verizon store claiming the touch screen was faulty. Guess what? It wasn't the screen. It was my touch. I still hold to the resolve that it was the phone's problem. If Helen Keller had had to develop the same sense of touch required to manipulate a Blackberry to "talk" she would have happily remained incommunicado.

"But have no fear," the friendly (translation: works on commissiont) sales rep that sold me my Droid today asssured me that this device is light years ahead of my old Blackberry. "Those Blackberries just weren't suited for apps," she informed me while the phrase, "There's an app for that," rang through my head.

I know that learning my new phone is just a matter of learning a new vocabulary, finding where the buttons, sensors or icons lie on my new phone to complete the simple tasks that I was finally learning to negotiate on my Blackberry. But I also  know as soon as I get comfortable with this thing that it will die as untimely a death as my last two phones. 

I am tempted to drain a couple cans of canned corn this afternoon, find an ice pick, make a  holes in the bottoms and get some string so I can finally build me a phone that will last. Text nessages were a lot simpler when I had my last phone of this type too, as long as there were some flat pieces of bark and charcoal lying around.