By Jerry Zezima
If Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with patenting the first telephone, were alive today, he’d be:
(a) On hold.
(b) Getting relentless calls about his car’s extended warranty.
(c) Convinced that my new smartphone has a dumb owner.
The correct answer is:
(d) All of the above.
At least Bell has the good sense not to call me — and not just because he has been dead since 1922.
But if he did call, I’d tell him about the hangups my wife, Sue, and I recently had when we traded in our old phones for the latest models, which now allow us to fall even further behind our grandchildren in technological aptitude.
I didn’t think I needed a new phone because nobody wants to talk with me. But my previous device, an iPhone 13, kept losing power and had to be recharged so I wouldn’t miss important messages from scammers and spammers, who ought to be in slammers.
I went to the phone store and explained the situation to Tushar, the very nice, smart and — this is essential in dealing with me — patient office manager.
He looked at my phone and said, “Your battery is OK.”
“That’s what my doctor told me,” I replied.
“Still,” Tushar said, “you should consider getting a new phone. This one is old.”
“My wife’s phone is even older,” I said. “It’s an iPhone 12.”
“You both need an upgrade,” suggested Tushar.
Thus did Sue and I bring our hopelessly out-of-date devices to the phone store to exchange them for up-to-date iPhone 16 models that not only have all the bells and whistles, which are annoying as hell, but enable us to receive incessant pitches from telemarketers who can be easily blocked but not, unfortunately, electrocuted because there is, as yet, no “zap” button on the new phones.
But a problem soon developed: The transaction wouldn’t go through.
“We can’t process your payment,” Tushar said after taking credit card information from Sue, who is the family banker.
“Does that mean the phones are free?” I asked hopefully.
“It means we are charging you more,” Tushar replied with a sly smile.
He explained that a new office device was down because of a software glitch.
“There are pros and cons to everything,” he said. “Connectivity brings us closer, yet we’re far apart.”
Even with the help of the “support team,” it took four days to solve the problem.
For the inconvenience, Tushar waived the activation fee.
“You should charge the company an inactivation fee,” I suggested.
Complicating matters was a frustrating but entirely predictable human issue: Neither Sue nor I could remember key passwords that were needed for Tushar to do whatever he had to do once the software mess was fixed.
So we had to make up new passwords (I forget what they are) before deciding what color phones we wanted.
After intense deliberation, I chose teal.
“That’s the color of my phone,” said Tushar.
“You are my inspiration,” I told him.
“As long as I’m not your perspiration,” he said.
Sue picked purple.
Then we had to choose colors for the tablet and the watch that came with the deal.
“I don’t wear a watch, so I’ll take the tablet in blue,” I said.
Sue picked cream for her watch.
Unfortunately, there was another issue: My phone was delivered to the house, but Sue’s phone wasn’t. Neither were the tablet and the watch.
“The one who does not pay bills got a phone and the who does pay bills did not,” Tushar said when Sue and I returned to the store.
Eventually, everything worked out, all the devices were delivered, and Sue and I are finally up to date.
I only hope that wherever he is, Alexander Graham Bell is getting relentless calls about his car’s extended warranty.
Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima
