A Simple
Phone, Please
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Last night Don and Dorothy, former
neighbors, made arrangements to meet me to go to Loony Beans in Cerritos for
breakfast. I went to the lobby at 8:50. I like to be prompt. I waited until
9:45 before I gave up; figured my wires had gotten crossed.
Things had gone bump in the
night. I had left my simple, cheap,
adequate Mexican cell phone on the bed where I was lounging with a book. I
always, always, always put said phone away in my bag in its pocket. Later in
the night, when I rolled over and stretched, I heard the phone hit the floor.
Shattered, of course.
When I got up this morning, I put
the phone back together, the best I could. It’s dead. Of course.
My only record of Don and Dorothy’s
phone number is in the dead cell phone. Of course.
Unbeknownst to me, they were waiting
for the taxi which was very, very, very late. We each could have walked the
distance twice in the amount of time we spent “waiting”. Don had called me ten
times, to let me know why they were not yet in the lobby.
We missed one another by minutes. Of
course.
When I went back upstairs, I shot
off a series of email messages to my neighbors. It was that or walk the eight
or nine blocks to where they live but probably are not home because they are
eating breakfast without me in Cerritos. I wrote three messages to tell them
what had happened to me. Okay, I’m having a disjointed day. Obviously.
I choked down a ham sandwich made
with dry bread from my refrigerator. While sitting on my balcony with my
current best friend, steaming coffee, I glanced out over the sea to see the
ferry from La Paz floating by in the sky. I swear, it looked like a gigantic
blimp. A second look showed me that the ferry was floating in fog which
obscured both waterline and skyline. I tell you, it’s that kind of a day.
After I gulped my final cup of
coffee, I took my metaphorical begging bowl and my best smile down to the lobby
to borrow a phone to call Carlos to ask him to take me to buy an overpriced and
overloaded chunk of plastic that requires the user to have an advanced tech
degree to operate and that I don’t want. All I want is my simple, old, cheap
and adequate phone. Something to make simple phone calls. No, I do not resent
the world passing me by.
Meanwhile, Don came home, read his
email and walked over to my hotel with an extra phone he and Dorothy happened
to have, a near clone to my shattered phone. I exaggerate. It is not exactly
shattered, merely in pieces.
Don took my phone, rearranged the
pieces, put them together like a child’s puzzle, and turned it on. It works.
Perfectly. My face is red.
Even I can put the puzzle together.
I had simply neglected to “turn it on”. I am almost too embarrassed to admit I
overlooked such a simple step. I mean, it was “on” when I kicked it off the
bed.
I thought long and hard about not
admitting this part to save face. But the truth makes a better story. Like I
said, it’s that kind of day.
It’s time for me to go home.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
February 8,
2018
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