The Rise and Fall of My Cell Phone

So on the day we left for Coeur d'Alene (the softball/Silverwood trip), as I was getting the Suburban loaded, I dropped my cell phone. No big deal, right? I mean, really....... how many times have I dropped the thing? It's been missing the top of its cover for months and months now. After we were on the road, I realized that the left hinge cover had broken off. Then I recalled seeing a bizarre bit of gray plastic on the ground -- ok, now I knew where it came from. The phone still opened & closed, but it was at a wonky angle. And it still worked.

For 2 days.

After that, the screen went black. If I could remember the right button combinations, I could recover my voicemail. Then, Emma got a hold of it, and literally tore it in two pieces. This phone was officially TOAST. So we went down to the trusty cell phone store.

This is a business we have been customers with for close to 20 years now. The chickie that helped us at the counter was not much older than that.

(You know you're getting old when you compare ages to inanimate objects. My mother always claimed the dryer was as old as Karen!)

So Cell-Phone-Store-Chickie shows us 3 models of phones that were gently used, but we ended up just using Todd's old phone, which happens to be the same model as mine. His camera lens was cracked, but we exchanged my lens for that one and were back in business. Of course, he had to tear my phone apart to get to the lens:

Cell-Phone-Store Chickie "tried" to restore my contacts from the broken phone to Todd's phone, but informed us that it didn't work. Great. That meant I would have to recreate my whole phone book from scratch.

The next day, Todd opened up Motorola Phone Tools on the computer, plugged in the piece of my old phone, and WHAMMO!!!! Contacts restored.

Now I know that Cell-Phone-Store-Chickie wasn't going to get any commissions from transferring my contacts for me. But it sure would have been a nice customer service gesture. I was not happy that she put so little effort into assistance.

Here's the kicker, though. Many of my contacts were set to a ringtone ("Montego Bay" -- hellO? I've got Jamaica on the mind!)..... and because that ringtone wasn't on Todd's old phone, the phone reset all those calls to ................... "SILENT".

The next day, Todd tried calling me a dozen or more times, and I never heard any calls because they rang through as silent. Days later, I discovered many more people's ringtones were reset to silent. So now, I'm still sorting through my phone contacts, and one by one am giving a new ringtone to them, so I can at least HEAR an incoming phone call.

So if you try calling me, and I don't answer..... maybe you're just still on "silent" for me!! I'm working on it!