By Jim Hagarty
2013
Ten years ago I bought a great little flip phone. It is still in use and works well. However, from the day I got it, I couldn’t figure out how to get voice mail messages that were left for me. So, I got right on that, in my usual style, waiting two years to go back to the store and explain to a salesperson there that I couldn’t get my messages. She told me how to do it and my eyes glazed over as she talked. Realizing she was talking to a fence post, she went to her computer and printed off a detailed sheet of instructions on how to get my messages. I say detailed because it was a pretty complicated affair to bring up my voice mail.
I sensed the woman was a bit miffed with me for having a clump of sod where my brain should have been, but I was glad she gave me the instructions and I took them and went home where I got right on it, in my usual style. Two more years passed and I dug out the instructions to finally get my voice mail after all that time. I left the sheet of paper on my desk, confident it would be there on whatever day I actually took up the challenge of figuring things out.
However, by this time, we had adopted a couple of cats, one of them, an incurable chewer. Someday I will detail a list of paper items this little jerk has chewed up. It is a long one. I would print you out a list but he’d probably eat that. And he not only tears the papers apart, he swallows about 50 per cent of what he chews.
Guess what was one of the first things on his menu when we brought him home? I found my cellphone instructions in tatters on the basement floor. Top forensic scientists would not have been able to piece things back well enough for the details to have been read.
Now, I am easily intimidated and if someone gives me the evil eye, I tend to avoid them. So, in the six years that have passed since then, I have gone without voice messages because I know that saleswoman remembers me and will throw a fit if I go back and ask her to explain this to me one more time. In reality, I am sure she doesn’t even work there any more, but when did reality ever get in the way of a down and decent fear?
My wife has the phone now as I have inherited another one. Saturday, she asked me how to get voice mail messages. I explained the dilemma. I left her a message to see if she could retrieve it. The screen told her she had a message waiting and that if she wanted to listen to it, press one. She did, and there I was, yakking over her phone and into her ear.
Somewhere along the line, probably five years ago, the phone company simplified the voice mail system and now, not even a password is needed.
For sale, reasonable price: One paper-hungry cat with ink-stained innards. Just call my wife on her cell and leave her a message. She’ll get back to you, in her usual style which is – right away.
