Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

As the years advance my wife and I grow more dependent on our cell phones, so much so that we make sure never to leave the house without our link to 911 safely in hand. And because we each have the same identical phone with the same identical ring tone, an occasional problem pops up.

The other day after we had both showered I had dressed first and came downstairs for lunch (we usually lunch together). I was seated in my recliner waiting for my better half to come down and as she alighted from the stairs she made a bee line for me saying, “How come I have your phone, where’s mine? It’s not upstairs!

“How should I know?” I replied. “Why don’t you call your phone? Maybe you left it in the car?”

“I doubt it,” she muttered as she dialed.

“I hear it, I hear it,” I shouted as I spun my recliner around. “I can’t see it, but it must be here, somewhere here!” I said, spinning wildly back around again.

“Well, it’s here alright genius, but you don’t see it because it’s in your pocket – I see the outline.”

“Phew,” I said, “really sorry about that, darling. I guess I got confused.”

Later that evening our daughter, who is a ‘techie’ changed my wife’s ring tone and explained, “now that mom has a different ring tone, you won’t get confused any more, dad.” (Little did she know how easily I get confused.)

The next morning I left early for a doctor’s appointment and to pick up a book I had ordered at the library. As luck would have it I took my wife’s phone again, proving that even though I have a steel trap mind, sometimes the trap springs shut at the wrong time or the wrong place or both.

So I’m in the library waiting for my requested book to be found, when the librarian says to me,

“Sir, your phone is ringing.”

“That’s not my phone, madam,” I tell her.

“Well, it’s in your pocket and it’s ringing,” she persists.

“Okay, okay,” I say smugly, reach into my pocket grab the phone and say, “hello, who is this?”

“It’s me again, genius.”

“What are you doing there?” I ask, still uncertain as to what’s going on.

“Same thing I was doing yesterday, looking for my phone, which apparently you took again, so nothing has changed except for the date.”

Guess she got that right!