I am not one of your cutting edge tech types. This is my third computer in over 20 years. And I'm on my third cellphone, largely owing to the first two's having been in expensive contracts which didn't stop them from dying on me...then the pay as you go tracfone came into my orbit and I seized on it.
I'm not a big phone user, largely because, as anyone else with a hearing disability will know, the telephone is an instrument of high anxiety. Some voices are clear and easy to follow, others might as well be talking in ancient Sumerian. It all depends on the range of the voice, since I'm missing just a few areas of pitch,damage from childhood measles. I do a lot of lipreading in normal life and most people probably have no idea I have a hearing loss, unless they turn away while they're talking and I have to ask them to start over. Or if they move something and the competing sound not only drowns out what they're saying now, but garbles what they said right before then.
Anyway, it's all very manageable, and when I get a phone I like, I hang onto it. The cell was vital during HP's long illness, for numerous medical specialist calls, being more useful than a landline, I hung onto it.
At this point my ancient tracfone is starting to falter a bit, and I had the opportunity to accept HS's castoff phone. This eventually happens, that parents start to get their offspring's hand me down, or hand me up, items, and very handy it is. This one in particular is geared better to international calls, which apparently my old one didn't like so much.
HS assured me it would be the work of a moment to transfer my minutes and days and number to the new (to me, old to him) phone, and set about doing so at the tracfone website. And found that my phone is so old it doesn't even register on the website any more, and it required the intervention of a human being to do the transfer.
Which he gallantly did this afternoon, waiting and waiting and listening to recorded assurances that his call was important to them, while the operators finished their round of golf, while I embroidered my latest wallhanging, to see which go here
We needed to be at his house, where there's a landline, as well as his new and my old phones. And finally a human took down the name rank and serial number, and will MAIL me the necessary document to allow us to go on line and complete the transaction. Low tech solution. So with any luck, I will end up with a phone that does all kinds of things I don't need, in addition to making vital calls which I do need.
My main concern is whether it will fit into my little cellphone purses I have been using...to be continued once the magic SIM (I thought that was a computer game) card has arrived and we can install the doings.
And my old cell, complete with charger and instruction book, will go the way of other ones, i.e. to the police department to donate to women in danger, so that they can make emergency calls if necessary. I used to send them via a friend to the local battered women's shelter, but I don't have that link any more. However it will serve some other woman well, one way or another.
I am on my 2nd phone. Hubby won't use it, hardly uses our land line. And the measles - I remember being sick and feverish with them, remember the hallucination of the wool fibre of my blanket between my fingers growing LARGER and LARGER and then smaller and smaller. The entire neighbourhood hit hard with the outbreak. But back to the cel phone - Daughter Dearest tells me I am entitled to a new one if I renew my contract - sends me into a flap, I hate technology, just barely get by with the current phone. Role reversals going on in Cowtown. - Jean
ReplyDeleteI'm on my second cell phone too - hardly ever use the thing, but it does serve a purpose. Our kids both live in apartment buildings and we have no access unless we call them to come and let us in. I want a phone that is totally basic with no bells and whistles - don't think they exist.
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