My Phone

Hello,

Last month when I was in DC two-year-old Lexi wanted to use my phone. That was ok much of the time as she just listened. At one point I told her no and she threw it in the toilet. Sarah yelled and snatched it out, but not before it got quite wet. After some inquires we learned that you can take the sim card out, as well as the battery and put it all in uncooked rice over night. It may have been dry in the morning, but a light only flashed on the screen a few seconds before it went dark again. I was not able to get a new phone before I came home.

It feels so uncomfortable to fly without a phone. How did people manage in the old days? It was necessary to trust Leroy to be at the airport at the appointed time. Hopefully he would not have to wait too long. I picked up my bag and waited outside, no Leroy. Finally I asked a women standing close by if I could have her call Leroy. Luckily I keep all these numbers in my calendar. People are so generous if you just ask, but I keep forgetting that.

Once home I did not go right away to buy another phone since the store had a senior day on Thursday and this was Sunday after all. I do not use the phone much around town so waiting was not a problem. Regretfully I learned on Thursday that the phones were not subject to the 15% off so the wait was not necessary.
The man at the phone company, Tracfone, told me that it could take 72 hours for activation, something to do with the fact that my old phone would not work and that I now lived in a different place.

By Sunday night there was still no service. I hate to call for most anything so excuses came easy, maybe they meant 72 hours of working days. By Wednesday evening there was still no service so further procrastination made no sense even to the phone shy person. The man that day told me that it was because of changing towers, but if I had no service in 24 hours to call back.

No service so I must again make a call. The woman this time told me that I could just keep my service with the same tower since it was not so far away. She then helped me manually get started. It took many codes of about 15 numbers to get this done. Because she gave the numbers as single units and not double digits such as 27 which I could easily make 72 we got the job done. I am not sure why, but they seem not to have a record of how many minutes I had left on my service. I did remember that it was close to 170. I also had the bill from the last time I added time so I knew that I had purchased through August 2010. She then put in the time and somehow it turned into 340 minutes. When I told her about that she said, “That is ok.” After that she said I will give you until 11 on the length of service. I thought she was talking about 11 as the month of November instead I now have service through September 2011. That is so great since I do not use my phone much therefore I will possibly not buy any more minutes before then. What looked like a negative turned into a positive. Plus I like this phone so much better than my former phone.

Paula