Good-bye Flip Phone, Hello Flippin' Fantastic

I got an iPhone yesterday, so I should be smarter, right?

I'd been plotting my purchase for months. Then, my flip phone started confusing my speed dialees so that every time I called my mom, it called my brother and every time I called my brother, it called Tiffany. That was the second-to-last straw. The last straw was when the hinge on the flip-part broke meaning that no matter whom I called, I had to hold the piece carefully to keep from hanging up on them. At that point, the phone was more flop than flip.

It was pouring down rain when I made up my mind to upgrade my mobile technology, so it was a horrible day to go iPhone shopping or to do anything else that required leaving the apartment. Still, Tiffany was game.

"Just think, I'll never have to make you take the pictures I want to take because I'll have my own built-in camera," I said, raising my eyebrows.

"Fine," she said.

We have a car, but, as I've chronicled here before, finding parking for it is a disaster, so we took our scooter instead, and climbed into the rain gear we bought for just such occasions. Tiffany took a picture of me, which you can see here. If I'd had my iPhone, I could have taken a picture of her. She was decked out just as atrociously but in black.

Anyway, the first person I called with my smart phone was my mom, but I couldn't hear anything on the other end of the line, so I hung up and tried again.

Then, smashing the device to my ear, I heard the faintest of hellos.

"Mom," I shouted. "I can't hear you. I just got this new f*cking phone and I can't hear you at all."

"Rebecca?" my mom said, as if from the depths of a tunnel.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it.

That's when I noticed I still had the protective plastic covering both the microphone and speaker.

When I peeled it off, my mom's voice came through perfectly.

I told her what I had done.

"Oh dear," she said. "Was anyone around? We don't have to tell."