My parents did the unthinkable and bought my 88-year-old
grandmother a cell phone. Now this may not sound dangerous to you,
but to the members of her family, this is a very dangerous
thing.
My parents did the unthinkable and bought my 88-year-old grandmother a cell phone. Now this may not sound dangerous to you, but to the members of her family, this is a very dangerous thing.
To understand why, you have to understand my grandmother. She’s so sweet that her nickname since childhood has been “Honey.” Seriously. She’s the nicest woman ever. That niceness, though, hides a will of pure iron. My grandfather always said that after 60-plus years of marriage, he only made my grandma mad once. And it scared the crap out of him.
Grandma lives with her dog, Sugar. When she adopted Sugar, she didn’t realize he was a male (her defense was that a lady doesn’t look at “those parts”). Anyway, Grandma had never had a male dog and at her age she didn’t see the point of changing. So she named the dog Sugar, refers to him as “she” and insists that Sugar is fine with it. Frankly, I think Sugar goes along with it out of fear that one day Grandma will dress him in a pink dress and take him out on a walk.
Anyway, Grandma recently moved out of California to live with my parents. Well, not with my parents. She actually made them build her a house next door – but she did so nicely, of course. Now, I know you’re wondering what all this has to do with Grandma and her cell phone. Well, the problem is that there are no landlines where they live. Seriously. Who knew such a place existed in the 21st century? And my grandma? She has phone issues that go way, way back.
You have no idea how much time it took for us to convince her to use a cordless phone. She loved her old Princess phone, which I believe she rented from AT&T for a billion years before they allowed her to “buy” it. As for her answering machine, hers still used actual tape. I swear I saw one just like it in an antique store.
But she’s always hated cell phones. Oh she’s had them – two in fact. The first one got tossed into the glove compartment of her car and was never seen again. The second one she refused to use because it didn’t have a dial tone. According to Grandma (who was very sweet about it), real phones had dial tones. And a cell phone was obviously not a real phone. So it disappeared.
But now, Grandma doesn’t have a choice. She cannot live without a phone. She talks to friends and family every single day – and in 88 years a woman with the nickname “Honey” makes a lot of friends. So she finally accepted the inevitable and agreed to use a cell phone.
For the first two weeks, she would place a call then flip the phone closed right when anyone answered. When asked, Grandma said it was because the phone was defective – you know because it wasn’t a real phone anyway. Finally Dad realized it was because she’d dial, then hit the flippy part when putting the phone up to her ear.
Of course, she went over her allotment of 8,000 minutes the first month. And the second month. By the third month, Dad had changed her plan to unlimited calling. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that means she likes cell phones. Every single phone call she makes or receives starts with the phrase, “Oh, this stupid phone …” And ends with, “I’ll talk to you later if I can figure out how to dial this thing. It doesn’t have a dial tone, you know.”
And don’t even get her started on the voicemail. According to Grandma, everyone knows that real answering machines have tapes that you rewind before you can listen to the message. And real phones apparently have different ring tones than cell phones. So even though Grandma apparently spends upwards of four hours per day talking to people on her cell phone, she still doesn’t like them.
Like I said, she’s so sweet, people call her “Honey.” But that doesn’t mean she isn’t iron-willed. If you don’t believe me, just ask her dog. Or call her cell phone. But don’t you dare leave a message.
