Oh my! My brain is swimming in mush today. I’ve been on a two day whirlwind tour with my 29 year old son Randall, whizzing through ‘this is how you do…’ on my new I phone 5c. We’ve been linking to, or connecting/disconnecting or hooking up (correct terminology left me days ago) Facebook, Instagram, Itunes, my gmail email account and well… I simply can’t remember everything we’ve done. So I write notes to myself, much to my son’s dismay. I can imagine what he’s thinking….
However, true to my nature of not always grasping the simplest of details while learning the vast amount my menopausal brain can hold, I asked my husband this morning, (really I did this) “Do you think that when my phone actually rings, I pick it up and hold it to my ear and say hello, like a regular phone?” Meanwhile I’m looking at my beautiful new, green, rectangular, super thin box with its lovely white case – covering almost all the pretty green I’d spent hours online looking at to decide what color I wanted. I held up the phone looking for the speakers, wondering how I was supposed to hold my new treasure. My dear husband, didn’t even bother to answer me while I stood there lost gazing at my ‘best deal ever’, according to my son.
So, all I had to do to get this amazing device was to cancel my other plan, (huh, how do you do that?) for which I got step by step son instructions, then choose my color, agree to a ‘share plan’ (a what?) with son and daughter in law – okay, I’m pretty sure those details will come later. Then I was to pay for the actual phone, gulp, accept the fact that the monthly plan is the best I’ll ever get even if it is $20 a month more than I’m currently paying for my smart phone. I trust my son so I nod in agreement even though we did this all by repeated phone calls while said son was in the store ready to purchase waiting for me to make up my mind, then agree to set up a direct deposit from my bank account to son’s for my monthly usage part and he’ll take care of the rest….uhm – really? I’ll get around to that banking thing soon, but not too soon.
On day one of the phone tutorial, sitting in a coffee shop, me, son, daughter in law and husband – you’d think we’d had a baby or something , and the first thing my son said, before handing me my phone was, “Okay Mom, one thing you have to know is this, you have to be very careful, you can’t drop it because it will shatter and…” I laughed because it was so reminiscent of times way in the past when I’d be telling him something similar about his new toy, while all he wanted to do was hold it, touch it or get using it. It was a quick hour of basic instruction and the two young-ens were off to dinner, while I very carefully held my new toy, terrified I was going to drop and wreck it especially because I’d overheard Randall say to Carly, “I don’t know about this, her other phone is pretty sturdy,” like I wasn’t even within hearing distance. I quietly agreed because my now apparently useless phone has been dropped on many occasions with no damage.
Overnight, from tutorial day one before day two arrived, I conned my husband to sit with me while we transferred some of my contact info from one phone to the new one because Randall originally said I couldn’t just import it all like other phones. The husband and son got busy online and discovered that ‘there’s an app for that’ or a way to do it but by then I was halfway finished and envisioned double entries and that just wouldn’t do so I painstakingly one by one entered all my ‘peeps’. (borrowing from the younger generation – people)
Well, day two tutorial was a 3 hour coffee and lunch paid by me event. What I loved the most, was the time spent gleaning from my son while smiling through comments like, and I loosely quote Randall, ” what old people don’t understand is this…, get rid of your home phone, everyone should be using gmail,” while clicking buttons, reprimanding me for touching the screen too hard, and showing me 10 different things at once, then taking the time to check his own phone that silently speaks to him and take care of his texts/calls and whatever else he was doing.
This reminds me now how I discovered an amazing feature on my phone. After the tutorial, at home where I was safe from thieves who may be lurking about ready to remove me from my phone (so says a personal warning) and carefully placed in my chair where if I dropped the phone it would land on soft padding, I had a question, of course – just one of a hundred but I’m trying to ask one at a time. I sent off a text message asking what the picture meant at the bottom of my screen – it looks like a vertical peanut in wine glass. I got up the courage to touch it to see what would happen. This happened. A wavy line appeared across the screen, my husband took ‘my’ phone out of ‘my’ hands and talked to the phone. Then magically words typed across the screen and I got all excited so I took ‘my’ phone out of his hands and did the whole process myself and then sent another text message to Randall telling to him NM, I got it. (for the uniformed, as I was until this week – NM is never mind)
I’ve just decided this is part one of Iphone C talk….part two will come another day. I must get back to my play time. Oh yes, perhaps by then I will know how to take a photo, get it into my laptop or connect to my blogs. Oh my!
Living in Truth 