Product Tester

Yesterday my aunt was coming up my driveway when she found a cellphone off to the side. It wasn't mine or anyone in the family's, so the best guess was that it belong to the paperboy and it fell out when he was making his delivery that morning. [Sidebar: How weird is it that we still call those guys 'paperboys'? Does anyone actually get their paper delivered by a kid anymore? Most of the people delivering newspapers are up at 4 AM, driving around in cars and their average age is around 35. I don't even think most papers offer afternoon delivery anymore. I had two friends growing up who delivered papers after school and I went on their routes a couple times (they never paid me, either). All I could think about was how much the job sucked. No wonder it died out. The days of the kids from "Newsies" is long-gone and yet the the term remains. Very strange.] Of course, the first thing we attempted to do was to call the person and let them know we had their cellphone, but ran into a slight problem when we couldn't figure out how the hell to do that.

I really don't want to sound like a grumpy old man here, but there was a time when a cellphone was a fairly straightforward thing. You would flip it open and there would be a button labeled "contacts". After that you could scroll down until you found the name you needed, press a button and it would call that number. Very simple. Now you have to unlock the phone, figure out how to open up the 'phonebook' app and browse through dozens of numbers. Also, everything is done with touch screens and I do not have fingers built for that - I like having buttons to press. And, not that I want to disparage this man or his organizational skills, but it wasn't like he had a number listed as "Home" like I do on my cell, making it convenient and easy should someone stumble upon my cellphone somewhere. On top of that this was one of those slider phones which is designed more for texting than calling, so even if I did figure out how to make a call it still wouldn't have been easy to accomplish. I played with the phone for a few minutes before I came to two conclusions: 1. I needed a new plan. 2. I would not be getting a Metro PC slider phone when my current contract expires.

The next plan of attack was to simply wait for the person to notice that his phone was missing and call it, at which point I would tell him I had it and where he could come pick it up. By this time the phone had 15 missed called, so clearly he had tried to call it earlier and I just had to wait until he tried again. However one of the times the person called I was out voting (it's your civic duty!) and the other time someone called when I was close enough to answer there was a slight language barrier we had to fight through (unsuccessfully). The problem was I don't speak Portuguese and the person who called didn't speak English. The call went something like this:

Caller: Hello? (Hi, I found your friend's phone in my driveway.)
Caller: Hello? (Um, hi. Yeah, I found your friend's phone?)
Caller: Hello? (Your friend's phone? I have it?)

This went on for a couple minutes before I gave up. I basically just yelled the message that I had the phone and would leave it outside in the morning for him to pick up, which I'm sure was never relayed. Fortunately I know someone who works for the Globe, who called the person in charge of the delivery people, who let the carrier know where his phone would be. It might not have been the most stream-lined system, but the phone was successfully retrieved this morning and all is right with the world.

Well, not everything. I remained perturbed at my inability to figure out the how to make a simple call on that cellphone. I used to be tech-savvy, dammit. I know that my cell phone is seen by techies as one step above a landline because not only is it a flip-phone (blasphemy) but it only takes calls, sends texts and snaps pictures. It won't run apps, play Angry Birds, tell me the current temperature in New Guinea or call in a tactical airstrike. Despite that, I still thought I was smart enough when it came to technology that I would be able to navigate my way through any gadget I came across without giving myself an headache (or at least fake it until I figured it out for real). I'm starting to realize that is no longer the case and it kind of bums me out. I knew this day was going to come eventually, I just didn't think it was going to happen so fast. At least if this happens again in the future I have nieces and a nephew to hand it off to. They're aged 5 to 1, so I'm sure they'll have to show me how things work soon enough anyway.