Apr 24 2007
Lesson # 5,433,983.02: Pink Stinks
I excel at losing and breaking cell phones. It’s artful, actually. Every time is a slightly different scenario. One was left behind at the Bryant Park Grille, another – the back of a cab. There’re a few more, but I won’t bore you with the amateur stuff. My crowning achievement, by far, mostly likely happened after falling into a 3′ curbside exhaust-saturated snowdrift. Yeah- that was special.
The previous insurance claim earned me the cell phone replacement insurance “kiss-off” letter. In lieu of signing away my first born and extending my contract through infinity, I used my mom’s cast-off late nineties Motorola until the 2 year upgrade came through a mere 6 months later. The replacement? It was pure evil loosely disguised as a grey ergonomically designed handset. Example? It called an ex-boyfriend (the ex-bf). This is, by far, the most severe infraction of the sacred trust between a girl and her cell. Unintended phone calls are par for the course, but come on: only a mobile device working as Satan’s personal foot-soldier would place such a call on Valentine’s Day.
Needless to say, I was psyched to get a cute new phone. Don’t get me wrong: pink is great as an overall color, but less fitting as the selection criteria for a mobile phone. Seriously: who knew that color and sleek design don’t positively effect the functioning of electronic devices? All kidding aside: I’m not that girly. The bluetooth capability was my main interest. Life goes so much smoother when my cell and computer are able to have their bi-weekly gabfest.
iBook G4: “Did you know Kara’s 10 year college reunion is coming up? I think she’s going to go. What ever will she wear?”
RazR V3C: “Who knows? It’s a month and a half a way. We both know she’s gonna change her mind a kabillion times. That reminds me: did you know she recently got back in touch with some folks from the good ole days?”
iBook G4: “Uhm… DUH! Who do you think told you? Dang biatch, you gots to gimme my props.”
RazR V3C: My bad. I’m cute and pink: I read somewhere that’s grounds for extra slack.
Furthermore, due to popularity of the RazR my pragmatic side concluded that it would be too easy to accidentally trade phones, which BTW is a hassle with which I’ve had first hand experience. Simply by selecting a pink phone, I reduced the risk of phone switchage by approximately 50%. I asked around and the consensus is, even amongst technophiles, that most dudes would rather have a rotary dial cell phone than a pink one. Plus, there are three different pink RazRs (one for each carrier), bringing the risk of mix ups to some arbitrary low number. Yes- thoughtful preponderance of the facts… Anyone reading this must, by now, by impressed with my capacity for critical thinking.
When I received my new pink phone my heart went pitter patter. I was in deep, deep love. Like most romances, the honeymoon period was shortlived and things went down hill instead of remaining off the hook. The bluetooth feature which sold me on this particular model had been disabled by the folks at Verizon. Further investigation revealed that if I were a software engineer I could probably figure out how to unlock the data transfer feature. The helpful wiki I found was kind enough to explain that screwing this up would make the phone as unuseable as, say, one that met it’s end in an undisclosed snowbank within a three block radius of Memorial Drive. By some fluke, I managed to download my addressbook on there once. It wasn’t ideal, but there was nothing else to do. So, I lived with it. Pink didn’t sync, but there are worse problems to have.
Then the “*” button stopped working. I played it off like it was a mysterious malfunction, but in the back of my head I knew it probably had something to do with my having cried prolificly during a phone call where the situation called for me to lay the smack down to a “John Doh”. This particular conversation was the dating equivalent of an exit interview… but for the exception that I gave us/him another chance one month later in a misguided attempt to gain closure on unresolved residual negative feelings leftover from the initial traumatic debacle.
A snake may shed it’s skin, but a leopard does not change his spots. Obviously, there was more crying. Luckily the initial surprise that comes with betrayal was absent and within months I got that whole thing out of my system. It was more of a nagging feeling of unrest and less of a sobfest. The phone still didn’t sync, nor could I press the star key when prompted… but other than that, things were perfect.
Perfect, that is, until early March. I hit the pause button on dating, so I know the floodgates didn’t open over a stupid boy thing. Truth be told, I can’t remember what I got all worked up over. Nevertheless, Noah almost had to load up the ark. My waterworks display disable both the 4 and the 7 button on my pink phone. So now, it didn’t sync or dial *, 4 or 7. It’s also important to note that the 4 button is needed when texting anything using the letters g, h and i. (For the record, pushing 2 twice does compensate for this malfunction.) The 7 button is similarly helpful when you need to text any message containing p, q, r and s.
Just as a fun little exercise, why don’t you try to compose a message communicating something of meaning, importance or urgency. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Got it? OK. Now, take that message and try to say the same thing, only this time you cannot use the letters g, h, i, p, q, r, s.
Not so easy, eh?
I asked the folks at Verizon for some help, but there was no love to be found. “Can you hear me now? Oh………… you can’t?”
So I put my tail between my legs and called in an insurance claim. Though I tried with all my might, my muscle didn’t have enough pull to get them to downgrade me to the previous Motorola bluetooth model. Also- no pink…
…but turns out this RAZR does sync. Verdict: gray can stay!
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
